The Future is Now

I was really prepped for a new Visual Movies post, but this was just too too cool!

http://www.ted.com/talks/pranav_mistry_the_thrilling_potential_of_sixthsense_technology.html

Oh man, the future! THE FUTURE!!! I am getting prepped for it man, because it is full of win.

Video from ted.com

And let me just say: imagine using a piece of paper as your laptop or taking a picture with your hands.  That is epic!

(500) Days of Summer

Oh. My. God. Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

image from http://www.impawards.com/2009/five_hundred_days_of_summer.html

I actually don’t like movies with this kind of plot line, where a guy is worshiping this girl like whoa and she’s just like “Yeah, I mean, no…” Every other movie I see that’s like that just leaves me feeling like the writer is reliving being a nerdy teenager in love with the head cheerleader.

But (500) Days of Summer is not actually that sort of movie.  For one thing, JGL as Tom makes his character really relatable and funny while he goes through his tumultuous relationship with Summer.

They jump around in the timeline of the relationship a lot, but it ends up showing just how roller coaster Tom’s life is when he’s involved with Summer.  On that note, I didn’t like Zooey Deschanel that much, but there’s also my bias of not like female characters who get put on pedestals.  The thing is, since it’s from Tom’s perspective, you can’t really separate that view point of her.  But damn, I keep seeing Zooey Deschanel everywhere, which might be from her indie music cred while I keep thinking about Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s performance and how much better I liked his character.  Maybe if we come up with a cutesy shortening of his name, people will talk about him more? (I am thinking of an RPattz treatment for him).

As far as indie romances go (or non-romances, as an intertitle/voice over is quick to point out), (500) Days of Summer is artfully done.  I would go so far as to say classy, although it does use the stereotypes typical to indie characters, like love of music, weirdly unique apartments, retro-cute costumes, etc.

Rob Roy

Ah, I really want to avoid comparing it to Braveheart, but okay: You know how there’s a drinking game in Braveheart where every time someone says “Freedom!” you take a shot? The drinking game in Rob Roy is “Honor.”
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image from http://www.allposters.com/-sp/-Posters_i414131_.htm

Robert Roy MacGregor (Liam Neeson) wants to improve his village’s life in the craggy area of Scotland that they live in, so he decides to take out a loan from a local noble Montrose (John Hurt). This would have gone swimmingly except for Montrose’s new house guest Archibald Cunninghamn (Tim Roth) is short on cash and an evil bastard.

My various points on this movie:

1) Costumes are awesome. The year is, I think, 1714, so you’re hitting the movie right between the Restoration-era fashion and the beginning of the Rococo fashions. While not so important for the ever-kilted Rob Roy, it’s really cool to see the costumes that Montrose and Cunningham have to pull off. Two of my favorites are actually this one of Cunningham’s:

image from http://www.justpressplay.net/

And I really wish I could show you the Duke of Argyll (Andrew Keir), but I can’t find any good images of it online.

2) Casting.

So yeah, okay, I saw this movie because of Tim Roth (shut up!) but the casting as a whole is really great. Liam Neeson plays Rob as very much the honorable hero, especially as a great leader whose main concern is the safety of his village.  This makes him a great foil to Cunningham, who spends his time wrapped up in his own problems.  Jessica Lange (who I love) is really top-notch as Mary, Rob’s wife.  This is increasingly apparent from oh, let’s say the halfway mark onwards.

 

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Reading into the subplot, this is a grand movie to watch for experiencing English abuse of Scotland, but in a more subtle, personal way than, say, Braveheart.  It’s really clear that Rob Roy represents Scotland, who is just working hard to get by while Cunningham is England, a literal bastard who can only think of thieving as a means of getting by.  What’s interesting to note in this interpretation is that they are both controlled by two men who hold greater power.  Montrose holds sway over Rob Roy because without able to pay him back, he’s in debt.  More so, Montrose houses Cunningham and makes his life difficult little by little.  The Duke of Argyll comes in as a player for Rob Roy by the third act, but you see him periodically throughout the film as an antagonist to Montrose.  The Grumpy Old Men of this movie, if you will.

It’s an epic costume piece, probably one of the best made in the ’90s.  For those of us who like to watch movies in order to travel, this is a great example as such.  The Scottish highlands look absolutely stunning and the three hundred years trip backwards in time is done very well.

Also, well… swordfights!  I like me some swordfights, don’t you?

One last note: I always forget that this was the role which earned Tim Roth his Oscar nomination until I watch the movie again.  It’s not so much Cunningham’s character– he’s really just the Spoiled Rich Kid Villain– but how Tim Roth plays him.  And he plays him well.

 

 

 

Ed, Edd n Eddy: I am Not Sure Why I am Watching This

So, um, there is an Ed Edd n Eddy movie on TV right now. I am not sure why I am watching it, but it is like pure nostalgia hitting me right now.

This is one of the few cartoon shows from elementary school that I still like to watch from time to time. I guess it ages well– a lot of the dialogue and premises are really ridiculous, but at the same time they can be fairly clever and original. I can sigh and say “Ah, it’s all just rude humor,” but a lot of it is hilarious in a wacky way.

I have to say, the trio together is a great relationship to sit back and watch. It’s not rocket science put together, but it is like– they’ve got a friendship and it will overcome petty differences or whatnot.

For this movie special– the goal is to find Eddy’s semi-legendary older brother– it’s the continuation of wacky hijinks–

AND OMG I FORGOT ABOUT THE KID WITH THE PLANK. And he has a… superhero alter ego, what the heck?

I think back when I watched it, it was the Forever Summer tv show. I couldn’t really identify when it was supposed to take place either, because there would be no mention of the internet or video games. And when I was a kid, I thought that no one read comic books anymore, and that could be a big part of the series sometime. It was like built-in nostalgia of the early era of American suburbia if you thought of it as a neighborhood from the 70s.

Yes, it was plot based (c’mon, it was a Cartoon Network show) but weirdly enough they had room for character development. It’s really hard to tear your eyes away from an episode if it’s on. The animation style is not picture perfect; in some ways I would even call it sloppy, but it is fun to watch. Life in that neighborhood was always unexpected and strange.

I stopped watching it a long time ago and I’m not sure why I’ve decided to pick it up again. A lot of the shows on channels like Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon seem really foreign now, with all of my favorite cartoons canceled or off the air. I had heard they had shown the last of the Ed, Edd n Eddy episodes a few years ago, but it must be popular enough to bring it back for a two hour movie.

In a lot of ways, it’s even better to watch now because I can appreciate just how weird and bizarre that TV show really was. Crap that made sense when I was watching it as an 8 year old are now truly mystifying.

So there it is, my cartoon stand by.

Astro Boy, or Review of a Review

Reading my local newspaper’s movie reviews (Raleigh News & Observer), I was a little perturbed to see that the Astro Boy review was mainly about how it was or was not appropriate for children.

Am I too distanced from childhood to determine this? Or too far away from adulthood/parenthood to think this was appropriate?

Okay, I haven’t seen Astro Boy yet, and I probably won’t, but that’s not the point here. I am wondering do we need disclaimers in reviews about children’s movies?

My personal experience as of late with “children’s movies” and little kids is, I saw Coraline in theaters, sitting maybe three seats away from a three year old girl who spent the greater part of the movie crying or whimpering.  Almost all of the print reviews I came across had to mention how inappropriate it was as a film for little kids, which irked me. For film as an art form, the reviewers job is NOT to give age disclaimers. That’s not the reviewer’s job, that is the MPAA’s job. Coraline got a PG rating, and after that it is the parent’s job to read the fine print and determine whether or not their child is ready for the movie.

In the Astro Boy review, I just don’t see why their reasoning for parental caution was necessary. It talked about Dr. Tenma’s original son’s death and some of the violence. But let me think: An important death, featured in the early part of the movie? FINDING NEMO! There are so, sooo many deaths of characters that exist in children’s films, whether it’s on screen or just implied, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. Sometimes that becomes a greater part of the plot, THE LION KING.

And this is my same  point that  I gave for Coraline. It’s the parents job to determine these things.  You might think you are helping the parents by listing x or y reasons because they are the ones who will be reading the reviews, but that’s not the  point of a review.

I’ve reached that point where I’m not sure if I’m too distanced from childhood to determine what did freak me out as a kid or whether I’m too far away from parenthood ethics to figure out whether or not I should care.

But maybe it’s the imposed mentality of parents that later influences kids?  I know some people think The Nightmare Before Christmas is too spooky for little kids, but I saw it when I was 3 and loved it.  But then I meet people my age who have never seen that movie or already base it as “Scary” when they were little, even though they’ve never seen it.

I’m entering a weird place.  But this is bugging me!  I don’t think parents or adults realize that kids are resilient.  If something freaks them out, it will rarely haunt them into adulthood, and if it does, then that kid probably needed a shrink even without that movie’s effects.  Yes, parents have the right to determine whether or not a movie is appropriate for their kids, but that is not a film reviewer’s job.

Okay.  Rant over.  (Aren’t you glad I didn’t launch into my alternate, but related rant of “Why do they always think animated movies are just for kids?!”)

Kinky Boots

image from http://www.troyangrignon.com/KinkyBoots.jpg

I liked it!

But it had the effect of making me list all of the songs I want to see drag queens sing before I die.

Now that’s a risk worth taking!

I Feel Like I’ve Caught Up With Things

Finally saw the Star Trek reboot, finally saw Inglourious Basterds.

The movie that opened this summer alongside the film that closed this summer, seen in one weekend. Both are excellent films, but for extraordinarily different reasons.

Inglourious Basterds will be the classic, while Star Trek will probably become the next dull movie franchise  in the coming summers. But as summer movies, these both succeeded at what the movie market needs right now, which is damn good entertainment.

On Star Trek:

Art by my Friend Natalia! You should check out here gallery!

(Um… in case the link with the picture doesn’t work, http://theartslave.deviantart.com )

1) Has anyone else noticed that we can’t have straight-up action movies anymore? It’s all action movies-cum comedies. Of course, I couldn’t figure out if we were laughing because it was funny or we were laughing because it was Star Trek.  The thing is, this is happening in a lot of movie franchises, such as Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, and, well, Star Trek.

2)The Fandom, She Grows. From my own reaction, but also from my friends, the Reboot has created so many new trekkies. It helps that the Original Series is now on Youtube and SyFy has been showing some of the various series as well. I can’t speak for what the fandom was like before, because I never had personal friends who were trekkies, but it seems to have grown a little.  Who knows, maybe I’m just seeing people who have always liked Star Trek before really freaking out over this?  But I think not, or at least, not entirely.

Is this important? It depends on who you are. Obviously to my Trekkie friends, yes, it’s all really important. To me? It’s interesting, but because the end of the reboot is entirely cruxed on the belief that we’ll be getting a sequel, this isn’t going to be a classic. Outside of the new trekkies, there will be those who will love it now, hate it six months from now. That’s sad because it’s excellent, but movies don’t have as much staying power in the public psyche as much as we might like.

Inglourious Basterds

From http://www.screenhead.com/reviews/tag/inglorious-bastards/

1) It flails around and screams “TARANTINO!” from the top of its lungs. But it works, because that’s how Tarantino movies work. I really liked it. I feel like it’s one of his strongest films to date. Everything ties up in a very bloody, historically inaccurate way, but it has that possibility of existing in the future as a classic.

2) Staying power: Not a movie you forget easily.  Again, pretty much a trademark of Tarantino projects.  The staying power reflects with, a) me waking up this morning and remembering some Brad Pitt’s dialogue from the last scene, but also b) this is a movie that can have people still talking about it ten years from now.

3) It’s shot beautifully.  There were a few great scenes where I was dragged out of the story going “That looks really cool. Most of the time I don’t notice these mise-en-scenes unless they are really eye-catching, so worthy of note.

4) Yes, I am a language nerd: When the characters were French, they spoke French!  The German soldiers spoke German!  The English and Americans… well, so it follows.  I love that the languages were matched for once.  It was important to the plot and it worked and damn it, things like having people speak their own language makes me happy!  Word to those with bad-eyesight though: because of this, it’s very subtitle heavy.

5) Why I liked it: It’s fun.  It’s World War II, but it’s a revenge story– unlikely, coincidence prone, but good to watch.  Funny in parts, an example of shock-value in others.

So the door opener and door closer for summer movies are worth a watch if you haven’t seen them, especially if you feel like autumn has come too soon.

October! Which can only Mean Halloween!

I love October. I think it’s my favorite month, since in North Carolina that’s when the autumn weather starts hitting us and the leaves start to change color, but also:

Halloween specials!

I’m such a sucker for these– especially Halloween cartoons and random Halloween movies.

In cartoon terms, you can’t go wrong with the old, 90s-era Nicktoons like Hey Arnold, which I think had a creepy episode every season anyway, but the specific Halloween episode is really nostalgic to me.

I have better memories for the Cartoon Network specials probably, but I also watched that channel a bit more as a kid (helps that CN had anime).

One feature length Halloween movie that I don’t think gets enough cred is The Halloween Tree. It’s an animated version of the Ray Bradbury novel, but it’s very true to the spirit of Halloween, which is a really hard to grasp, whispery ghost of a thing. It reminds me of why Halloween has such a great, creepy atmosphere around it, especially for children.

And of course there’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, but I’ll probably end up doing a blog post proper about that (sometime in the future…)

I actually don’t have a tradition of watching Horror movies for Halloween. I maybe watched a Friday the 13th sequel one afternoon while I waited to go trick or treating, but I dunno. Maybe I should start?

So yeah: Halloween. Autumn. Generally an awesome season full of awesome, cartoon memories. I would say “Let’s have a Halloween themed month!” but damn, not sure I could swing that. Unless you guys want to be bombarded by the pseudo-spooky movies. Well, let’s try that and see how it goes.

(Also, ABCfamily’s “13 Nights of Halloween” looks more like “13 Nights of Tim Burton”. I am not against this.)

Future Plans

I’m thinking of another Visual Movie coming up, probably from “Brideshead Revisited”. If anyone has any suggestions for future Visual Movie posts, please leave a comment!

I’m considering “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, “Chocolat,” “The Fall” and “Swing Kids” for other Visual Movie Posts.

Sunshine Cleaning

One of those movies that reminds me how much life can suck while making me laugh at the same time.

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Albequerque . Current Day.  Amy Adams is a maid with an adorable (if public-school challenged) seven year old son!  A Rebel Rebel younger sister!  A shennanigan-y father!  An affair with her married high school sweet heart!  And it kind of… really… sucks.

So here’s an idea!  New job!  Cleaning up after dead people.  Ick.  Have to afford that private school somehow!

I really liked Sunshine Cleaning, but it was also one of those movies that reminded me how low that life can become.  The film suitably opens up with a suicide and is later marked by two others.

While the cleaning company is the major plot device, the movie is really about the relationships Rose (Adams) and Norah (Blunt) have with other people.  Rose is trying to hold onto the life she had in high school with the affair and her desperation at a baby shower to show that she is a success.  Norah finds herself caught up in a friendship of a daughter of one of their decomp clean up jobs, always getting caught up in who these people they were cleaning up after were as people.

Sometimes the film relied on hijinks to move the plot along, making their sad business seem quite funny, but with the sad effects after death, especially after suicides, the grimness of their jobs and life seep through the celluloid.