Super 8

Recently I was able to watch the movie Super 8, written and directed by J.J. Abrams. The movie was a good sci-fi flick, with cool effects and an altogether engaging story.

The movie starts with a backstory that serves to both (a) mention the main plot and (b) drive SEVERAL character relationships and subplots. The movie is about a train crash that occurs while a bunch of local kids (our stars) are filming a movie, and develops into a conspiracy-like mystery. It's almost like a dark Scooby Doo, though it touches on things much deeper than some guy in a suit who wants to keep kids off of his lawn.

The movie, the first central point of the plot, fades slowly into the background as the circumstances surrounding the train crash become more pressing, and the interplay of movie and said circumstances drive the exploration and evolution of many character relationships. In some cases, this works to be a sort of "Um, guys, the boat is on fire, stop kissing and making up and get moving," but it's never excessively drawn out like that. It's just that, in some instances, it seems a little out of place.

Contrary to the darker tone of the movie, the ending is surprisingly fairy tale-like -- and I'm saying that with the full knowledge that we are talking about science fiction. The ending made a viable, though improbable, resolution, tying everything up in a neat little bow that shouldn't be quiiiite possible when you're dealing with oh, I don't know, A FLAMING TRAIN CRASH. I can feebly try to justify the way it happened, but my attempted reasoning doesn't really have much power.

Overall, the movie wasn't bad, though.

Paprika

Finally, finally, FINALLY got to see the animated movie Paprika, directed by the late great Satoshi Kon. I've been wanting to for a long time because the stills I'd seen were so beautiful and colorful. And, now that I've seen the movie, I know why.

The story is one of those "the bounds of technology may have been reached; see how tampering with nature is screwing us over!" ones. Scientists have developed a device called the DC Mini, which allows people to view and record dreams. However, a terrorist has gotten ahold of said device, and it's up to the scientists, as well as a mysterious dream-world woman, a chipper redhead named Paprika, to stop them before they make all hell break loose.

The movie is interesting and intense, and the theme is certainly applicable to today. The visuals are great, and just as trippy as one would expect a movie that half takes place in dreams would be.

I'm quite glad I watched it at last.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

I'd heard a lot of omplaining about this movie - that a lot of things had beeen changed, and that it really strayed from the book in irritating ways.

What I noticed about the movie was that it was very dark. Literally. I watched the DVD, and the only way that one could have a prayer of seeing the movie half the time was if the television was the only light-producing source in the room, practically. It was really hard to see what was going on, and a lot of details and such were lost because of it.

Also, I did see the differences between book and film. The two major ones concurned the Burrow and the end of the movie, with the major character death. First, the Burrow scene bothered me. It really did. It was like, I understood the symbolism and all, but it was still a "was that REALLY necessary?" sort of thing. The second scene, surrounding the major character death (in the Harry Potter series, from book four, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, onwards, there was one death per book - er, well, the first had the prequel deaths and the seventh was a veritable bloodbath), was what I had heard a LOT of complaint about. Admittedly, I found the ending to be very calm and stagnant, so to speak, with not much action, but the death scene I thought was done very well, and the infamous wand-raising thing I found to be a pretty nice thing. I didn't react to it as badly as a lot of people seemed to.

The concentration on romance in the movie kind of bothered me. I mean, I think part of it was in the books, as well, but it was incredibly pronounced. It felt like a major aspect of the movie.

Oh, and the revealing of the half-blood prince's identity...so anticlimactic.

I dunno. I guess compared to the action-packed stories of the previous books (particularly Goblet of Fire) and movies, this one was very slow and somewhat...quiet, almost.

I definitely see why people didn't like it. It wasn't a -bad- movie, though, just not as good as its predecessors.

By the way, best scene of the movie came at the beginning, in the Weasley twins' shop:

Ron: How much is this?
Fred/George: Five galleons.
Ron: How much for me?
Fred/George: Five galleons.
Ron: But I'm your brother!
Fred/George: Ten galleons!

Enter the Dragon

I just watched the Bruce Lee movie, Enter the Dragon. I must say, for all the hype and cult loyalty you hear about with this film...I'm not going to say it was bad, but it was surprisingly corny. Don't get me wrong, the fighting was amazing. But some of the acting was a little iffy, and some parts of the movie were confusing or just plain boring. The beginning, especially, suffers from this. Once he gets onto Han's island, things pick up, and that's where the fighting kind of really begins, so that's pretty much where it gets interesting, because the movie is certainly a focus on martial arts.

The Thief and the Cobbler (+ Recobbled)

Honestly, someone had shown me this movie a few years ago, and I didn't mind it. I'm not going to say I LOVED it, because it wasn't anything exceptional. It was very Yellow Submarine-esque, though, which I appreciated. Plus, the Thief's random thoughts were epic and memorable, to me. Though they made the movie kiddie and goofy, I found them hilarous, personally.

The Nostalgia Critic recently reviewed The Thief and the Cobbler and, put simply, he ripped it a few new ones. Honestly, with his criticism of the Thief's thoughts aside, I couldn't argue with him. The musicals bugged the crap out of me, but I'm also just not a musicals person, generally. At the end of his review, he did say that the 'Recobbled' version of the movie, the one which used final film footage, storyboards, and the like to tell the story it was meant to be told by the orignal director, was pretty good.

After that, I decided that it was time to see what this 'Recobbled' version was all about. I found it on YouTube and I have to say...what the Critic said was right. It WAS pretty good. There was significantly less dialogue - neither the thief nor the cobbler spoke for the duration of the movie, with a few exceptions for each (a few for the thief like 'ow' and '*SCREAM*', the Cobbler with one line at the verrry end)...it was mostly everyone else and the animation itself carrying the story. Scenes were explained better (since they were shown in full), ideas were developed more, and there were no musical numbers anywhere. While I'll admit I missed the thief's thoughts, that's all that I could say was missing. It was so, so much better than the finished (Miramax) version. And it was a bit more mature, I'll say. Who knew that the scene where the thief crawls up a toilet (don't ask) was actually him crawling up into a covert sex scene? And that the backscratcher scene would actually serve a purpose (foreshadowing, omg!)? There was just so much that clicked and it was told beautifully with nearly no words. And it had the definite lighthearted, nostalgic feel of a sixties movie (when the movie was started), with the high-pitched chorus of singers poking in every so often.

But yeah, it was REALLY good!

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland

I finally saw it. It was incredibly well done - had all the charm and goodness of Tim Burton. The clear references to the books were amusing, though I only noticed a few (I haven't actually READ the books, I just know a few quotes like believing six impossible things and all). The designs were pretty cool, too. All the subtle character details - like how Stayne, the Knave, had a black heart eyepatch while out on the field and a red one while in the presence of the Red Queen, and the White Queen's dreamy, gentle bearing - really added to the depth of the story. And the Cheshire Cat was just win. Because the Cheshire Cat is win from the beginning, really.

I also found myself envying the designer of Alice's dresses. Though actually, to be honest, I had some problems with a few of them. They were very imaginative and very Burton, but the ones that had sleeves midway down her arm bothered me. I dunno. I just didn't like them very much. And the fact that they were either with those weird sleeves or sleeveless just...got to me, for some reason. I don't know why. I guess I found it repetitive or something. Or it didn't fit with my idea of Alice in Wonderland at all.

But that's probably my only complaint, if you could call it that. Overall the story was very imaginative and extremely well told, the characters were distinct and memorable, and it was just overall awesome. I see why people were raving about it.

SALT

Okay. Granted, the way I was watching it made it really hard to hear what was being said, so it was hard to make sense of it from the getgo. But still, it was kinda ridiculous. It was, in essence, an excuse to make Angelina Jolie hardcore eye candy - being tortured, blowing stuff up, taking her panties off to get away, and just generally be a total femme fatale. Which is cool, except that they made the plot really annoyingly difficult to get with plot twists that were like okay...can it be one or the other, please? The difficulty for that may have been, though, as I said, an effect of not being able to hear the TV. And by the way, the physics were ridiculous. Jumping off a subway train barrelling by a station - those things are going AT LEAST 35 mph, especially how it seemed in the movie - is NOT going to work like that, the way physics works she would have likely slammed into (and squashed through) one of the poles. And all the jumping on trucks...yeah, right.

It was very hard for me to suspend my disbelief. All it was in my eyes was a bunch of kickass fighting and explosions with Angelina Jolie at the fore.

The Taboo Topic: Twilight

Yes, everyone's heard of it, the four-series book about vampires and werewolves that is once beloved and despised by society (two different portions of it, not at the same time, generally). It's true, Stephenie Meyer didn't write them too well - the style is pretty bland. But once you let yourself get into it, the books aren't THAT bad. I'm not saying that they're amazing, and I can't speak any further than New Moon, but they really aren't that bad. The first one I was skeptical the whole way through but I didn't mind it in the end, and the second one I found myself getting into.

The thing about the second one, though, is that I read that AFTER I saw the movie. Now, I heard people screaming about how good it was, but I, for one, HATED the New Moon movie. I found it to be the most bland and boring thing ever on the face of the earth. I know there's a lot of intense drama going on in that book, but that is ALL that the movie is, pretty much: intense drama. I can sum up half the movie like so:

Two characters are talking, staring intensely at each other in the drama of the moment. The camera gives a headshot of CHARACTER ONE.

CHARACTER ONE
(dramatically)
LINE.

There is a pause. The camera shifts to a shot of CHARACTER TWO.

CHARACTER TWO
(dramatically)
LINE.

Seriously, that's what it felt like. The book did a better job of going in-depth and actually made it feel like Bella was a human and not just an Edward-centric puppet. I loathed that movie, I'm sorry. I just did. I couldn't stand it. But it did make the book better for me.

Now I'm going to read Eclipse, the third book (as far as I know). I have NO idea what goes on in this one, nor have I seen the movie (obviously), so this will be a first with the Twilight series. I will actually find out what the hell is going on IN THE BOOK.