Movie Review: Fright Night 3D
More funny than frightening, but on some levels enjoyable nonetheless.
I never saw the original, and normally would have tried to watch it before hand. However, after my marathon Harry Potter thing I think I have done enough pre-movie watching for one month. I will have to just judge this movie on it’s own merits. My best friend Dave says the original was great. Actually he says it was Big Trouble in Little China great, which is saying a lot in my book. I guess I will have to see it soon. (Pork Chop Express image courtesy of the movie t shirt category)
So Fright Night. I enjoyed it in a campy way. I am always appreciative of vampire movies where the vampires are not somehow good and/or sparkle in daylight. In this movie vampires do what vampires are supposed to do in daylight: burst into flame and die quickly. Not great, however, and if you really think about it you can be pretty bothered by a lot of the film. I strongly suspect that once I see the original one I will come to realize that this flick is one of those horrid too slick CGI remakes that are so prevalent right now.
So, the movie. Charlie (Anton Yelchin, from the new Star Trek and the God-awful Terminator: Salvation) is a high school kid who has recently made the nigh impossible (at least in my experience) transition from uber nerd (apparently he had attended a Farscape convention. I have done the same, and see no problem with that) to cool kid, and apparently one of the perks of rejecting who you really are on the inside is a super hot girlfriend. His ex best friend Ed (Chirstopher Mintz-Plasse from Kick Ass and Superbad) is feeling hurt about being dropped like a bad habit and is threatening to reveal some of the cooler (IMO) moments of Charlie’s youth. He needs Charlie’s help proving that the new neighbor, Jerry, is actually a vampire.
Of course, Jerry actually is a vampire, and whole families are going missing. Ed gets turned when Charlie leaves him hanging. Some humorous moments occur as Jerry (Colin Farrell, who wavers for me between kind of cool and really annoying. In this one he was the former) is super creepy and threatening. Vampire hunting hijinks ensue. The action gets very Buffy the Vampire Slayer-esque, which makes sense as the writer Marti Noxon actually wrote a bunch of Buffy episodes. If you have seen even one show then you have more or less seen all the action and story resolution in this film.
By the way, I looked up Marti Noxon in IMDB and was surprised to find out first of all she is a woman, and second of all pretty hot for an older woman. I have to say I am intrigued by her writing style and assumed intellect. I’ll add her to the list of women I will never get to meet.
Anyway, stuff blows up. We get a couple of appearances by the stupidest cops in the history of law enforcement. David Tennant from Dr. Who shows up as a local “expert” on vampire hunting. Vampires die. Humans die. A happy ending gets pulled out of nowhere.
The stars. Kind of funny. One star. The characters and their dialog was probably the best part of the film. Two stars. Decent CGI. One star. Some really hot women (although no gratuitous nudity, which I was pretty offended at. If you are going to get an R rating anyway can you at least throw your horny guy audience a bone here?) One star. None of the characters acted in what I thought was a stupid, typical horror movie manner. One star. No sparkle or “good” vampires. One star. Total: seven stars.
And the black holes. There was nothing thrilling or frightening during the entirety of this film. It does not deserved to be called a horror movies. One black hole. For a movie that seems to want to reside in the “funny horror” neighborhood of horror films, it really wasn’t all that funny. A few chuckle-worthy moments, but that’s pretty much it. One black hole. The 3D did nothing, and the blood and gore was minimal and obviously fake. One black hole. They fell back on the whole Buffy-style “no-one-in-town-ever-notices-the-fact-that-kids-and-entire-families-are-going-missing” thing that was my biggest beef with Buffy (sorry, but if several dozen teenage kids went missing in a town the size of Sunnydale there would be about 1,000 FBI agents parked there). One black hole. The cops were dumber than a sack of hammers and failed to talk to the woman in a domestic disturbance call, look into three separate hit and run incidents, or even look into an obvious case of arson (sorry, digging up a gas pipe and setting fire to it is pretty much going to raise a couple of eyebrows when the fire department comes around). They are seriously written to be non-entities for the duration of the film. One black hole. In the movie the main vampire is said to want to turn all his victims and pretty much needs to feed every night. A little basic math would mean that if he turns one person each night and then they each turn one person by the end of a full month the entire population of North America would be vampire. Petty I know, but really two lines of expository dialogue would have cleared this up. One black hole. The ending might have been good for an episode of Buffy, but reeked of POOYA syndrome (Pulled Out Of Your Ass) for a movie. One black hole. Total: seven black holes.
So a final score of zero stars. Not really good, and honestly I can’t recommend you spend your hard earned dollars seeing it in a theater. Also, I very strongly suspect that if I had seen the original Fright Night I would end up giving it another 4-6 black holes. Just look at the review I did for Conan. This could be a good brainless NetFlix night. Not bad, just not that good.
I’m at a trade show for the next two days (viva Las Vegas!) so my next post won’t be until Tuesday night maybe (probably Wednesday). Have a good start of the week.
Movie review: Conan the Barbarian in 3D
Another great classic is reanimated only to be burned by the local villagers (I mean scriptwriters).
You know, being what is generally considered highly intelligent and perceptive is both a blessing and a curse. Sure, it helps me notice things like smoke coming from under the hood of my car and make the intelligent connection that maybe I should stop before it blows up, but sometimes I know ahead of time when things are going to be horrible, and Conan the Barbarian is the perfect example of that. When I first saw the trailer I had that slow sinking sensation you get from stuff like swimming in the ocean and seeing a fin angling for you. It could be a dolphin, but odds are you are about to lose some significant anatomy.
This movie is also great example of being careful what you wish for. A couple months ago I was bitching about the fact that I couldn’t find a bad movie worthy of my sarcasm, and low and behold, here one is! Unfortunately it is a remake of one of my all time favorites, so I feel like I am desecrating a corpse.
How did I know this was going to blow? Well, first of all, some movies just really don’t need to be remade. Conan the Barbarian circa 1982 was cinematographic awesomeness that holds up even to this day. Arnold at his best, great action, a compelling story of love and revenge, and a guy who turns into a giant snake. What more could you ask for? So they show the trailer for this new turd and immediately I know it is going to suck, just in comparison to what was previously known. But was it going to suck as a stand alone film? In other words, if Conan had not been made in 1982, how likely was this to suck by itself? For insight on that question I turned to friend of all movie reviewers IMDB. My fears were allayed when I found out they had hired a bunch of people no one had ever heard of: sub par remake director Marcus Nispel (the Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2003, Friday the 13th 2009, the Very Best of Cher the Video Hits Collection 2004 (WTF???)); writer Thomas Dean Donnelly (Dylan Dog, Dead of (the) Night 2010, which I reviewed and it sucked, A Sound of Thunder 2005 (bad film adaptation of the Butterfly Effect), Sahara 2005, Thoughtcrimes 2003); his writing partner Joshua Oppenheimer, who has all the same credits and may just have been responsible on some level for the creation of the atomic bomb, and a couple other losers including Sean Hood, who wrote for the Crow Wicked Prayers 2005. With a pedigreed lineup like that there is no way this movie could really suck, right?
It’s not so much as I am disappointed in these less than talented individuals (I mean, look at their track record. You can’t expect much) as I am bitter at Hollywood for taking another cherished childhood memory and whoring it out for a few quick bucks. Does a decent directory and a couple of good writers really cost so much that you feel you have to inflict visual pollution on the screens of America? Hell, go to any film school, find 100 seniors, and tell them all to write a Conan script. Make it a contest and one of them will come up with something that reads better than this Miles O’Keefe worthy opus.
Anyway, the movie. How does it suck? Oh, let me count the ways. The thing is, with the original Conan (yes I am going to be making a lot of comparisons. With a film like that you can’t not. Deal with it), the writers kind of knew the level of acting they were dealing with (i.e. not a lot) and wrote the character and dialog to best suite Arnold’s acting strengths and weaknesses. There was minimal conversation and they made up for it with great direction and visuals, coming out with something brilliant. I cite the opening sequence as an example. Conan’s village is attacked by raiders under a double snake emblem. Everyone is killed, and Conan gets chained to the Wheel of Pain for fifteen years before being trained as a arena slave in gladiatorial games. That is pretty much it, but with almost no dialog whatsoever you are told everything about Conan you could possibly need. Where he is from, what motivates him, how he became so skilled in battle, etc. In this dog, I knew it was going to hell when Morgan Freeman (I think. Sure sounds like him, but I couldn’t find a credit) starts the film with a narration about what is motivating the bad guys (some kind of evil mask). Hey, morons. This is a film from primitive times. We don’t need a really complicated motivation for the bad guys to be bad. Simple rape and pillage should be sufficient.
Anyway, in the new film Conan is ripped from his mothers womb in battle by his father (Ron Perlman, why can’t you pick out a decent script?). There was a chance for a nice training montage that I, as a fan of Kung Fu movies, would have appreciated it, but they cut it down to show us how Conan was a brutal killer even before being trained. Good genes, I guess. Also I guess they paid for a blacksmith set so they had to show a sword being forged. His village gets overrun by the bad guy (Stephan Lang, and the only performance that didn’t totally suck) who is looking for the last piece of the magical mask that we were just told by Morgan Freeman that was broken up and scattered among the barbarians. Apparently he wants to use the mask to have his daughter resurrect his dead sorceress wife with the blood of a purebred (not sure what kind of purebred. Dalmatian, maybe?) so she can help him conquer the world. See what I mean about overly complicated.
Anyway, Ron Perlman takes a molten steel shower and Conan escapes (what the hell? No Wheel of Pain? Lame.). Morgan cuts in with another expository monologue to avoid all that pesky story development and tells us that Conan is now a great warrior and thief. Conan is somehow the most civilized barbarian in the history of the world (you know, just not wearing a shirt so you can expose your overdeveloped pectorals does not make you a barbarian) and spends his time freeing slaves and whatnot (remember when Conan was just motivated for loot, and only discovered the bad guys when he broke into their tower to steel anything not nailed down?), with the help of some blatantly rubber boulders a la Star Trek TOS. I’m not kidding about the civilized barbarian, by the way, his speech and actions are about as far removed from actual barbarians as this movie is from talented writers.
So we find out the bad guy and his daughter (played horribly by Rose McGowen. Sorry Rose, I think you are hot, but if you are going to play a primitive evil sorceress can you please try to pretend you aren’t a SoCal bimbo?) have the mask, but instead of using the last 20 years to more or less conquer the world they have been looking for their purebred (English Bulldog?). By coincidence it is a hot young girl (ever notice the chosen one is never a fat male bookkeeper?) who lives in a monastery. Some brain deadening action occurs. The monastery has bad stuff happen to it. Conan rescues the purebred (Beagle?) but then sort of captures her to be used as bait for the bad guy. More bad action occurs. Magical hijinks ensues, including the only fight scene that didn’t make me want to pass out when Rose summons some Sandman-esque demons who are actually pretty cool. Unlimited henchmen, bad and good, are killed by the truckload. We grind our way to the pretty dumb ending that I and I think no one else in the audience cared about.
The stars. Sand demons. One star. Ron Perlman. One star. Jason Momoa, whom I like from Stargate Atlantis. One star. Some completely and utterly unnecessary but highly appreciated gratuitous nudity. One star. Giant octopus fight. One star. I’ll give props for costuming. One star. Most of the villains looked pretty cool and had some nice variety. One star. Total: seven stars.
Now the black holes. Honestly, I found it really kind of boring. I was in serious danger of dozing off, and not just in the acting scenes. The action was so repetitive and predictable, and I had no connection with Conan whatsoever, not to mention that he doesn’t even get slightly hurt so there was never any tension. One black hole. A pale imitation of a great film. One black hole. No Wheel of Pain. One black hole. No “What is best in life?” One black hole (What is Best in Life image courtesy of the movie t shirt category). No Riddle of Steel (they had some dumb Mystery of Steel, but it was lame). One black hole. Dialog so bad that Robert DiNiro couldn’t deliver it well (“I live. I love. I slay, and I am content.”-Conan). Two black holes. Wooden, mediocre acting almost all around. Two black holes. Remember how Conan’s love interest was an accomplished warrior herself? Not here. One black hole. Conan’s thief sidekick falls into the annoying comic relief category (in the original he was pretty cool). One black hole. Annoying monologs in place of decent direction and story telling. One black hole. Location subtitles for places that don’t really exist. Are we supposed to know or care? This isn’t a James Bond film. One black hole. Conan the Civilized Barbarian. One black hole. The main bad guy had a really stupid double bladed sword. One black hole. Is it unreasonable to assume four trained warriors can capture a woman with no weapons training whatsoever without her sticking a knife in the unguarded heart of one of them? Where does that need to have the girl strike back at least once per fight come from? I’ve seen it in other films and it always strikes me as pandering. One black hole. General bad direction. One black hole. Generally bad writing. One black hole. Total: eighteen black holes.
Wow. Eleven black holes. A film finally got a worse score than Green Lantern from me. A lot of that is because I am a Conan fan (Conan O’Brien too, for that matter) and see this as some of the most odious crud possible being shoved down our throats in the pursuit of a quick buck, but I have to go with what I know. And honestly, if you are going to remake a movie or attempt to restart a franchise that give me the absolute right to make all the comparisons I like. If you didn’t want to be compared to the original you should have called this something like A Barbarian Kills Some Guys. I would have probably seen that and not really bitched so much.
Anyway, big weekend for movies. I plan to see Fright Night, and Attack the Block. If I can stomach it I might force myself to see Spy Kids: All the Time in the World 3D, but that looks pretty painful. There’s something out called One Day that looks wholesomely romantic, so I might see that later in the week.
Speaking of 3D, I want to call shenanigans on the whole 3D thing. It did nothing for this movie, to the point that at one time I took my glasses off and honestly didn’t see a lot of problems for like five minutes. I think the day will come when they sell us on 3D glasses only to show us a 2D film and laugh all the way to the bank.
By the way, my friend Joshua over at theStream.tv just posted a video with Jeff Lewis (Vork, from the Guild) for a game show they do called Stream, Lose, or Draw that is pretty funny. I am a huge Vork fan, if only bacause I knew about eight guys like him back when I played WOW.
Movie Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II
Yes, I liked it. I’ve pretty much liked the whole series. I now realize there is no way I could have fairly reviewed it without having seen the rest of them, so I think I took the right path. I will also say that there was a lot of stuff I didn’t understand, and some stuff that came up in this movie that I probably could have used about five movies ago, so I guess I’m now at the point where I pretty much have to buy and read the books. Do they all have to look so goofy on the cover? One thing the Lord of the Rings has always done right is made their covers as dignified and ominous as possible. I think I would have bought the books years ago if they hadn’t all featured a skinny, bespectacled kid who has a goofy smile on his face.
By the way, after my rant about carrying a ton of extra wands and using a wand in both fists my best friend Dave invented the Gatling wand, so I want to give him props for that. I think it’s brilliant.
I am going to keep my questions down to the ones I feel won’t spoil the plot at all, in case someone like me has not seen it yet or read the books. I will also keep the story synapses to a minimum. Basically Harry and his friends are still on the horcrux Easter Egg hunt, and it leads them to Hogwarts, where the imprison the entirety of Slytheryn (finally) and then are besieged by Death Eaters. Cool stone statues come to life to defend. Stuff gets blown up. People gets killed. Everyone seems to have forgotten where they hid their brooms again. Voldemort rains unholy nostril-faced hell on pretty much everyone. Two of my three predictions pretty much came true.
The stars. Great ending to a pretty awesome story. Two stars. Great special effects and CGI. One star. I’ve gotten so used to all the characters that none of them bug me, and they have all matured nicely as pretty good actors, especially Daniel Radcliffe. One star. The story, in a very real way, was extremely satisfying. One star. They didn’t waste any time with a recap of Part I at the start of the film. It was a huge F you to anyone who didn’t see the first one, but really who is that dumb? Besides almost me. One star. Snape had a really cool, integral part that actually gave him a lot of depth. One star. Despite my fears, Draco Malfoy manage to not end the movie dead or in a horrible situation. One star. The plot was fast paced and made a lot or sense. One star. Ron and Hermione finally kiss. One star. They didn’t try to get a softer movie rating by holding off on the massive carnage. One star. Two more bonus stars for an all around great movie experience. Total: thirteen stars.
Now the black holes. I am going to give one for all the stuff that I would have known had I read the book but they couldn’t stuff into the movie for illiterate morons. I know this would be almost impossible to pull off in a less than six hour movie, and I don’t hold it against the film, but I still see it as somewhat of a failure. One black hole. Voldemort seems to play pretty fast and loose with his last remaining horcrux. One black hole. Dumbledore resurfaces to ruin all the respect he gained from me in the last couple films in order to prove he was exactly the manipulative, heartless bastard I though he was in the first few movies. One black hole. A couple of the deaths of characters I liked kind of really harshed my buzz, especially Ron’s brother. One black hole. Total: four black holes.
So a grand total of nine stars, an excellent score for an excellent series. I feel pretty good about this. However, it would not be one of my Harry Potter reviews if I did not come up with more dumb questions to ask.
Back on wands. I now understand a bit more of wand lore, thanks to one scene where a wand loremaster kind of lays out some details, but I am still intrigued by the idea of size and shape. Could you make your want the size and shape of a baseball bat? Then, if you are in a duel and your opponent is kind of kicking your ass but you are up close you could give him or her a magical concussion. What if you made your wand into a broom stick? Then you could fly around and 
basically dive bomb people. What if you made it into the shape of a boomerang? Then, if someone disarmed you it could come back. For that matter, could you just make a wand the size and shape of a shotgun stock? And then just maybe mount a shotgun to it? That way, just as you are doing one of those different colored firehose duels, with minimal effort you send a load of buckshot at him. Sure, most if it would probably get vaporized in the conflagration, but if a couple pellets managed to hit Voldemort in the shin that would be a pretty huge distraction. (Shotgun image courtesy of the video game t shirt category).
There is a scene in the movie where a bridge gets blown up with explosives, along with a bunch of bad guys. That kind of implies that explosives have an effect on wizards. Why, then, instead of stone guys armed with medieval weapons does Hogwarts not just have a couple of self propelled artillery pieces? The part where the Death Eaters are all together on a hill shooting at Hogwarts could have gone pretty bad for them if someone had called in an airstrike. I don’t know if magic really has to mean you can’t occasionally throw in some modern technology, especially if your life is in danger.
Is Snape not still obligated to protect Draco Malfoy due to his unbreakable oath? He seems to take a pretty lax position with regards to that, letting Draco run around and get almost burned to death. If I were obligated to protect some kid on pain of my own death I’d have him locked up in an oubliette with crate of canned food and a Game Boy until the fireworks were over.
Where did the giants and spiders come from? Did they just see the action brewing and come along for the ride? Does Voldemort have an account with Rent-a-Monster, but his credit limit isn’t enough to get dragons so he just ordered the two he could afford? For that matter Hogwarts can afford to hire dragons, as they did for the Tri Wiz competition. I think I’d have a few of those locked up downstairs in case a huge army of Death Eaters, spiders, and giants happened to come calling.
So every single kid at Hogwarts is some kind of super brave hero? Sure, Slytheryn is evil and all got locked up while Gryffindor is supposed to be the brave ones, but there wasn’t a single Hufflepuff who was like “Hey, I’m just here to get an education. I don’t want to get mixed in this dark master crap.”? If an army of unimaginable evil had laid siege to my high school and I had access to a flying broom I would have bugged out so fast your eyes would spin, and I probably would have set up on a hill nearby with popcorn to watch the show. (Actually, if an army of unimaginable evil had had destructive intentions towards my high school I probably would have gone out the them with a bunch of Cliff Bars, in case they were hungry. However, we are not here to discuss my high school experience).
That’s pretty much it for now. I have to run. Thanks for sticking with me on my Harry Potter marathon. It has been a blast. New movies this weekend. Talk to you soon.
The end of the Harry Potter Marathon is in sight: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I
Yes, I’ve seen all that can be seen via DvD and am now poised to see the very last one in a theater tomorrow night. I say poised but in truth I am excited. In spite of my original belief that Harry Potter was a kiddish version of the Lord of the Rings it has really engaged me and held my attention. I honestly think having watched them all back to back like this I might have even gotten more out of them than most people did, and I am ready to see the final one tomorrow. That will be a full on review, with the whole stars and black holes thing, but this one will be the usual abbreviated version with annoying questions.
I have kind of pondered why I am not comfortable doing the whole review thing for these. It’s not like stars and black holes take any more effort to write up than coming up with these questions. It really comes down to a few things. First off, I don’t sit on my couch and watch DvDs with 100% of my attention. I am usually working on my new secret army (just got the second full rank of the first unit done. Very laborious), or folding my laundry, or whatever. Therefore I could be easily off on some of my assessments and impressions. Also, these movies are in the past and I want to treat them differently. I don’t think any of you gain anything by having me recount the story and then pick it apart in painful detail. Finally, I have noticed a trend where when I start doing black holes I can act like a broken fire hose, spraying black holes in quantity and volume that I originally didn’t intend. Often times this can really look like I hated the film, and the fact is I am quite enjoying these. Also, there are enough psychotic Harry Potter fans out there to actually make me concerned for my safety should I get too harsh on it.
However, that does not prevent me from coming up with more annoying questions. The good news is since the Deathly Hallows does not feature any Qudditch I have not come up with any sports related questions. However, my first questions directly related to Voldemort.
Here it is. Voldemort has created seven horcruxes in which he has hidden fragments of his soul. As long as even one of them is intact he essentially cannot be killed. Why, then, does he leave them lying around for anyone to come across? If I had seven horcruxes the first one I would embed in a six foot block of concrete and then drop into the Marianas Trench. The second I would stick inside the Japanese nuclear reactor that went bad. The third I would magically transport to the dark side of Pluto. Actually, since they can only be destroyed by very specific means I think I would send the fourth into the sun and the fifth into a black hole. The sixth I would embed in my body, probably where my appendix used to be. The seventh I would put in a relatively easy place to find, but surround it with as many deadly booby traps as possible. I’m not talking trap doors and rolling stone balls, either. Claymores. Nice way to thin out the Voldemort Killing Committee. The one thing I most definitely would not do is give one to a crusty lady with terrible fashion sense who has already been bested by my worst enemy once to wear around the Ministry for any fool to grab.
Speaking of the Hot Pink Nightmare, Dolores Umbridge, didn’t she get eaten by centaurs a couple movies back? How did she resurface?
I have a question about the Death Eater recruitment program, and it kind of ties in with a previous question I asked about the economy of the Harry Potter world. What, exactly, does Voldemort promise someone like Snape to join him? I can understand a crazy nutjob like Bellatrix Lestrange doing it just for the joy of causing mayhem, but Snape is a well thought out, cautious, learned man. What could possibly induce him to not only risk his life and career, but also to betray his friends and colleges, as well as make an death binding oath to protect what is effectively just another annoying Hogwarts student? All the power in the world? Sorry, that is reserved for Voldemort. Money? A hot car? A makeover reality TV show? Honestly, what is it? It doesn’t seem like anyone in this world is hurting for money and can conjure food at will, so what do you offer a man who has access to everything? I can understand once Voldemort more or less takes over everything being a Death Eater is the cool thing to do and all the wizards are gung ho to join, but Snape seems to have been involved for a long time. What was the first carrot Voldemort ever held out?
As an aside, I do have to give props to the directors for casting Helen Bonhome Carter as Lestrange. If you are ever casting a crazy bitch with possible occult powers you really can’t find anyone even slightly better. I loved her in Fight Club, but she seems to have been really stereotyped in the roles she is given (Paper Street Soap Co (from Fight Club) courtesy of the movie t shirt category).
I have a question regarding the title of this movie. When I first heard the Deathly Hallows I assumed the Deadly Hollows referred to a serious of inimical geographic locations. You know, like Sleepy Hollow, only deadlier. I find during the course of this movie that the Deadly Hollows actually refers to three items that are presumably horcruxes. I have taken the liberty of looking up both hollow and hollows in a couple different dictionaries and, while there are a number of definitions, none of them in any way relate to any kind of magic item or fetish. Is the J.K. Rowlings just screwing with the English language to make for a better sounding book? I admit Harry Potter and the Deadly Objects really doesn’t have the same oomph the hollows gives, but it just seems a little self serving.
Note-I just found out I am an idiot. The title is Deathly Hallows, not Deadly Hollows. Thanks to all my Harry Potter fan friends for not making me avoid that huge mistake. I haven’t been this embarrassed since an unfortunate incident in the first grade I don’t want to get into.
I am glad to see that no force on Earth or Heaven can prevent J.K. Rowlings from employing deus ex machina yet again. Does it not strike anyone on the planet that the fact that Luna Lovegood’s father just happens to be wearing a pendant that symbolizes the exact three things Harry has to find has to be the biggest coincidence of all time? Or even that Harry noticed it? Every character in this movie is wearing an occult symbol as a pendant. But seriously, Xenophilius Lovegood is such a fan of a children’s story that he wears a pendant from it? That is like me wearing a pendant symbolizing Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
By the way, did I miss something? How did Harry lose his tracking chip?
Finally, if both Harry and Hermione both know that the pendant horcrux is screwing with Ron’s attitude and perceptions, and both understand that within a few hours of taking it off he will be back to normal, why did they bug out and leave him with no means of finding them after he calmed down? My dad used to take us camping once in a while and was a total jerk. I would get pissed off and run off into the woods to throw rocks at stuff. This is like if he packed up the car and left me on my own hundreds of miles away, except for the fact that Ron actually likes Harry and Hermione. I’m glad to see that Ron and Hermione’s romance is still going, but at some point one of them has to say something. I am going to be really, really upset of one of them gets killed in the next movie and leaves the other one miserable.
That’s it for questions. I am going to see Part II tomorrow night, I think. I am going to take a moment to make myself feel better and make a few predictions, based on what I know of J.K. Rowlings writing style. Let’s see if I am half as smart as I like to think. These predictions are based on no prior knowledge whatsoever:
Harry Potter himself is the final horcrux. Severus Snape will sacrifice himself in the end to stop Voldemort. There will be no non-white characters in the film at all.
That’s it. I’ll let you know how it goes. Have a good one.
Movie review: Tree of Life
Film of Boredom
Look, given what I have read by other, more accomplished film critics about this movie my review is going to make me look like a knuckle dragging, low brow inbred white trash moron who can only be entertained by big explosions and bare breasts on the screen. That may well be the case, but the fact is I studied art in college, and took a lot of film and video classes. I know a few things about film theory. I love French surrealist films. Film symbolism and subtle nuance is rarely lost on me. A good independent film is a joy for me, and when I go into one that I know doesn’t conform to the Hollywood model I really try to reset my perception to look for intentions and symbolism I might not see in a movie about a super hero.
As you might have gathered from this so far, Tree of Life was not what I expected, and that’s because what I expected at some point during the movie was SOMETHING. Nothing happens during the entirety of the film. This film as like if you spliced some of the more acid induced elements of 2001: A Space Odyssey with someone’s home movies. There is no plot. There is no protagonist. There is no point. You spend two and half hours (that felt like six hours) alternating between asking “What the frak?” and praying for something, anything to happen. Hell, by the end of it I would have been happy to have had someone pull the fire alarm in the theater. (What the frak image courtesy of the tv show t shirt category).
You know, I realized about 2/3rds of the way through this opus that, if, while in school I had come across 1,000 hours of someone’s home videos and a $2,000,000 CGI effects budget this is probably the the video art project I would have come up with, for which I would have deservedly gotten a B-. For me it screams self indulgent vanity piece, which is weird because most directors do a vanity piece after they do several dozen decent movies, not four, most of which no one has ever seen (the Thin Red Line being the only one of his films I had seen previously and honestly kind of liked it).
I was so perplexed by this that I actually listened to a couple interviews with the actors in the film and found out that the director, Terry Malick, didn’t really have a script or dialog so much as he would give the actors lines as they filmed it, and allowed them to improvise as they saw fit. This actually makes a lot of sense. There is very little actual dialog in the film and what there is seems really unpolished. Instead we get to see a ton of slow panning shots of Brad Pitt’s face shot from under his chin, a lot of Stand By Me style scenes of young boys running around playing and breaking stuff, a lot of mommy bonding with babies and boys while dad is more or less abusing, and a lot of Evil Captain Kirk shot up from the ground two feet in front of him stumbling around as Sean Penn has a mental breakdown. I have said several times that this movie is like watching home movies, and that appears to be exactly how it was shot.
I won’t say it didn’t elicit emotion, as long as depression, boredom, and confusion are emotions. The movie starts off with the parents dealing with the death of a son, and then starts flashing back all over the place. The thing is, home movies can be fun and whimsical, kind of like watching the Wonder Years, but the fact that we start off knowing that one of the three boys is destined to die casts a terrible pall over every scene that follows, and you spend the entire movie wondering which of them it is going to be. Can there be anything more depressing than watching a loving mother bonding with her infant and toddler sons, knowing that in a few years one of them will be tragically killed in some ill defined manner? Of course by the end of the film I was praying for any of the characters to die, if only to break up the monotony.
Sigh. The story, for lack of a better term. The film starts off with Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain playing Mr. and Mrs. O’Brian, a typical 1950’s couple who receive the horrible news that one of their three boys has been killed. Since the news is delivered via telegram I can only assume it was in Korea or Vietnam. We get to sit through some disjointed funeral and dealing with death scenes, which for Mr. O’Brian seems to involve watering his lawn. There are some early references to Job and some highly pretentious voice over passages that all seem to be very Bible related, so I think there was something about the whole “why do bad things happen to good people?” debate in this. Anyway, we are treated to a red lava lamp (that recurs several times) that I think is supposed to represent the creator and suddenly are whipped back to the beginning of time and the creation of the universe. At this point I really wasn’t sure what was going on and had heard someone describe this film as science fiction, so my interest perked in the hope we were actually on a another planet and the dead son was going to be reincarnated as an alien, but sadly this was not to be the case. Instead we were treated to a long zero purpose montage of the creation of our planet from a flaming ball of lava to single celled organism, evolving into fish and eventually into the dinosaurs on the planet. I am not kidding. Basically we got to watch discovery channel for 20 minutes.
I said the dinosaur sequence was a montage, but honestly the entire film is a montage. It is a long (long, long) string of disconnected scenes mashed together with no attempt to have any scenes connect in any way, or for the matter have even a few of the scenes have any plot points or story significance. I doubt there is much dead footage on the cutting room floor, as Terry pretty much shoved in any scene where they didn’t accidentally shoot the boom mike. Anyway, flash forward a few hundred million years and it’s the 50’s in Waco, Texas. The O’Brians are starting their family and have three sons, who rapidly grow up to late pre-teens and pretty much stay there for the rest of the film. You occasionally flash forward even more to modern New York where Sean Penn plays some kind of architect or business owner. He is one of the sons grown up and apparently haunted by the death of his brother, so every time you start to feel even a little warm and fuzzy watching idyllic 1950’s you get a nice reminder of the impending death of one of the three precocious kids. Also, at one point he starts having acid trips and is somehow in his suit out in the desert. The scenes jump around purposelessly. Sometimes it is Brad Pitt as Wally Cleaver, being a great dad. Sometimes it is him being my dad, authoritarian and borderline abusive. Sometimes it is the boys playing, then fighting, then wrecking stuff, then getting into trouble. The thing is every time you think one of these scenes is going to develop into something, it doesn’t. There is a scene where Jack, the oldest boy, seems to have a crush on a girl from school and follows her after school. OMG is something interesting going to happen? No, lets cut to another scene of the boys chasing a frog around and never see the girl again. Jack hates his father in a classic Oedipal complex (I’d like to give the movie some credit for delivering that concept in a subtle manner, but at one point the kid pretty much shouts out that he hates his dad and that his mother only loves him). You see a scene where Mr. O’Brian is working under a car with just a flimsy jack holding it up. The kid is tempted to release the jack, possibly killing his own father. Wow, could this actually get interesting? No, lets show the kid running off and hitting a tree with a stick.
This goes on and on and on. There is a lot of weird crap thrown in too, like a repeating scene of young Jack being inside the house that is flooded and swimming out, and a recurring scene of underwater grass waving. Not sure what that was about. Eventually Sean Penn is in a scene of a bunch of people on a beach, including his dead brother and (possibly dead) mother. I guess it is supposed to be the reuniting of the dead in heaven? I spent the last hour or so praying for the credits to start rolling and then, with no apparently real conclusion or purpose, they do.
The stars. Brad Pitt. One star. Sean Penn. One star. Authentic 1950’s stuff. One star. Reasonably accurate portrayal of what young boys do when left to their own devices. One star. Some very cool old cars. One star. I’d like to give the acting a star, but really I can’t say that is so as none of the dialog scenes actually extend past two or three lines. The director could have easily just taken the top 1% of the scenes they filmed and dumped the rest to make more room for dinosaurs. I will refrain. The film and camera work were actually pretty good. One star. Total: six stars.
Now the black holes. I have to give a couple for the time I spent in the film asking “What the hell is going on?” Two black holes. Bored. Bored bored bored bored bored. Three black holes. No real plot. Two black holes. They kept flashing back to the acid trip lava lamp creator of the universe. One black hole. No real dialog. One black hole. No protagonist. One black hole. Disjointed editing. On black hole. Pacing from hell. One black hole. The actual points I think was trying to be made about either the creation of life, man’s insignificance in the universe, or the injustice of bad things happening to good people were all actually pretty prosaic, not to mention poorly delivered. One black hole. Purposeless journey to the Land of the Lost. One black hole. Total: fourteen black holes.
A less than grand total of eight black holes from me. Why, then, the disparity between this review and so many others? You see, I think this is a prime case of the Emporor’s New Clothes syndrome. This film won the prestigious Cannes’ Palme d’Or award. Cannes’ Film Festival is held in such high regard that no one who has a serious career in movie reviewing can risk going against the consensus of the film intellectual elite. Thus, every critic must say something good about it. Fortunately for you readers I have no serious film reviewing career and can say what I really feel, which is that this film was a steaming pile of pretentious crap. I don’t know. Maybe I am a moron and am missing something beuatiful and deep, but I can only review films based on my actual film viewing experience, and that experience was that at some point during the film I was wondering if the green Exit signs in the theater had actual batteries in them that needed replacing or if they used rechargeable ones they just kept charged up from the power grid. I guess on some level I sort of get what Mr. Malick was going for, and will say he managed to nail the atmosphere brilliantly, but overall I feel like I just watch two hours of random videos off YouTube.
The Harry Potter marathon continues: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
What a crock! Just when I was starting to like Dumbledore and think he was more than a manipulative, conniving old fool who got a thrill out of seeing young people risk their lives on stupid stuff he has to go and take a nose dive off a tower and die of kinetic energy poisoning. It’s really kind of unfair. Part of the reason I was starting to like him was in this and the last movie he more or less showed what kind of kick ass wizard he was. Now it’s nothing but kids.
This movie was good as the rest, but I am really starting to feel the lack of knowledge not having read the books is handicapping me with. The first few stories managed to avoid that, but as the whole story progresses it gets more and more complex and it is pretty obvious now that the series really is for the people who read the books. I think the biggest part of my confusion has to do with all the girls. Somehow in this movie they managed to introduce between 3 and 8 girls who all more or less look the same, talk the same, have the same dialog writer, and are so interchangeable that I can’t tell which one is which and how they got involved in the first place. Was the girl who helped Harry hide the book Wealey’s sister, or the one with the love potion? How did she even know about the book or know that Harry had to hide it? Could she have been the one who tried to kill Dumbledore with the necklace? Why is it the only girl who looks at all distinctive (blond hair, super pale) is the local space case who can’t be counted on to deliver any dialog that isn’t surreal? It’s actually kind of infuriating. Weasley was dating a girl early on and then seemed to dump her when they found out he was under some kind of love potion, but it also seemed to be implied that there were two different girls.
I also think it worth noting that this movie doesn’t really seem to make any pretense of racial diversity. At least in the last one you had the two cute Indian girls and a couple of black people. In this one, except for the super hot waitress at the start of the film (Elarica Gallacher) it was a sea of whitebread. Even all the villains were pretty white. Not sure what that implies or says, but aside from the socio political ramifications it helped make keeping all the characters except Ron, Hermione, Harry, and Draco apart really, really difficult. They all seemed to blur into a sea of blandness.
Anyway, the movie was pretty good, and I have to say I am totally hooked and want to see how this thing ends. I will also say that while watching this film I had a sudden flash of insight about what may or may not be the big surprise at the end of the series. I won’t say it now, as some of you may have not seen the last one and also, if I am wrong I can just never mention my insight again to avoid embarrassment. If I am right, however, I hope you all remember this when I claim credit for being a super genius.
Once again I am force to point out that Harry and his Mystery Gang failed miserably to figure out who the bad guy was, and only found out when he revealed himself. I am actually really disappointed it was Professor Snape. That just seems really obvious and simple minded. It’s like having the bad cowboy always wearing the black hat. The really interesting twist would have been if the Death Eater turned out to be Professor McGonagall. From what I hear J.K. Rowling creates quite the diverse and descriptive world in her novel, but so far she hasn’t really shown that she understands what subtlety or plot twists really are.
I am going to boil it down for Harry and his crew for the next movie. If you want to figure out who the villain currently is, ask the following questions:
1. Is the person associated with House Slytherin in any way?
2. Is the person the current instructor of Defense Against Dark Magic?
If the answer to either of these questions is yes, the whip your your wand and blast him or her where they stand. They might as well rename the position the “Professor of Kill Harry Potter” (Curses Foiled Again image courtesy of the novelty t shirt category).
As always, this movie has inspired some other annoying, specific questions.
First off, I have to go back to Quidditch again. As far as I can tell, Hogwarts has one Quidditch field, yet with four houses has four Quidditch teams. When they were showing the tryouts for the Gryffindor team it seemed like they had the field to themselves. I have been on several athletic teams in my life (football, wrestling, and rowing) and in each case we practiced a minimum of five days a week for 3-4 hours a day, after class. Do the Hogwarts teams only practice 1-2 days a week? There are only so many hours of daylight after class in which they could actually do anything, so how to the teams practice? If they all practice at the same time wouldn’t that more or less make it impossible to develop new strategies without the other teams finding out? A Quidditch field looks pretty crowded with just two teams on it. Wouldn’t having four teams plus alternates on the field more or less make for mass confusion and/or mid air collisions?
Second, when I was in high school chemistry we would play with some dangerous stuff (acid, etc) but nothing that would do more than give you a horrible, disfiguring burn. How, then, can the new Potions Professor ask these 15 year old kids to make something called “Liquid Death” (I think) that he says “One drop could kill us all”? That’s like asking a high school chemistry class to make up some nerve gas. It’s pretty much guaranteed one of those kids is going to screw up and spill the stuff all over the place. Even if it wasn’t pure enough to kill the whole class it still sounds really dangerous. I think OSHA might have a few words to say about the lack of gloves and masks going on in that room. Also, what idiot thinks that 15 year kids are emotionally stable enough to be trusted with the knowledge to create a WMD in class and not use it? I can tell you that at age 15 if I had had the knowledge all it would have taken was one more wedgie to see me dumping in the school water supply. Maybe British kids are better adjusted, but judging by what is going on in London right now, I wouldn’t bet on it.
Third, while the whole movie really tries to make out Draco Malfoy as a young villain, I have to say I have nothing but sympathy for him. Sure, he as some serious issues getting on with fellow students, but he is obviously a very troubled boy. He is ambitious but constantly having his achievements and abilities superseded by Harry, who seems to succeed without really trying. His father looks like a Wraith from Stargate Atlantis and just turned Death Eater, after infecting him with all kinds of class and racial prejudice. He is kind of being alienated by most of the rest of Hogwarts. He is a member of the most evil house in the school. He doesn’t apparently have anything even remotely resembling fun in his life. Is it any wonder he is a member of the Trench Coat Mafia? Honestly, it seems that a caring and alert school official or instructor might have seen trouble coming with that one and perhaps tried to intervene in a positive manner rather than teach him how to make death potions. Is there no one who can spot a desperate cry for help? I’m probably just bitter because I had a laundry list of problems in high school that secretly I always hoped someone would notice, but no one did. Draco Malfoy, I hope you end this series in a positive place, but given J.K. Rowlings sledgehammer approach to story crafting I doubt it.
Fourth, while I understand the theory behind the concept of a boarding school, the fact is these kids are spending nine months out of the year away from their family. Ron seems OK as his brothers and sister are around, and Harry can’t get away from his aunt and uncle fast enough, but Hermione seems to imply she has a loving home of Muggle dentists somewhere in the world. No one sees a problem with the fact that parents never come to visit, or the kids go home on weekends once in a while to reaffirm their family ties? Sounds like a recipe for future sociopathy.
Finally, I’m a little confused as to when Ron became the Hogwarts sex symbol. As far as I can tell, he’s a mediocre wizard, not terribly witty or charming, doesn’t appear overly burdened with good looks, and not the brightest bulb on the tree. His only talent lies in being a Quidditch goalie. Why does he have every girl after him? I do gain some satisfaction in seeing Hermione interested in him, but I see that as more an offshoot of their long time friendship than anything else. I do hope that romance continues.
That’s pretty much it. My cousin just moved back to Oakland and is dragging me to see Tree of Life tonight, so expect a review for that one tomorrow. I have no idea what it is about, except possibly living and/or a tree of some kind. I’ll watch the next Harry Potter tomorrow, and then see the Deadly Hollows part 2 at the theater. Bye for now.
Movie Review: 30 Minutes or Less
With bonus feature: why 3D is officially dead to me now.
I have been looking forward to this film since I first saw the trailer. It looks funny, has gorillas in it (or guys in gorilla masks), bombs, and stars a pizza deliver guy, a job I did for 3 years before and after college. All the elements for a great film, right? Well, in this case the equation added up correctly, as I laughed my ass off.
I’m a little perplexed here, to be honest. I checked a few other reviews and have found a lot of other people hated it for being too dark and/or mean. But really, how is it scatological humor in the Change Up is funny and the inane coincidence pseudo humor in Crazy, Stupid Love is heartwarming yet the frenetic gallows humor this movie hinges around is too dark and grim to be worth laughing at? Horrible Bosses was a better example of grim humor failing to be funny than this one by a long shot.
I don’t know. I just have to go with my own gut reaction, and that reaction is I was laughing a lot during this movie. It might be a matter of personal perspective. I have always appreciated gallows humor and can really understand the concept of if you are going to die anyway than there is nothing to lose by stomping on the gas and blowing through a toll booth at 120 mph.
I will say I had a weird reaction on the drive home. I was thinking about the film and remembering laughing a lot. However, I was hard pressed to actually recall which specific lines or scenes I was laughing at. I feel the biggest problem this film will suffer from is forgetability. It’s a film equivalent of self pleasuring yourself; good for the moment, but really not that satisfying and in the end you have to think to remember what motivated you to do it.
Speaking of self pleasure, I know I say this a lot, but the girl in this movie could easily be my future wife, assuming she has a thing for bitter movie critics who sell nerd t-shirts. I have always had a thing for Indian girls (Dilshad Vadsaria is actually Pakistani, but you get the idea) and dated one for seven wonderful months (before getting dumped right after Christmas. Another pleasant drive by down memory lane). I was afraid I might be creepy in the way too old thing, but then I found out she is 34, which puts her in my date range (my birthday was Monday, by the way. You don’t have to get me anything). This might have added a lot to my enjoyment of the movie.
Anyway, the movie. Jessie Eisenberg plays Nick, a go nowhere loser who delivers pizza for a living and works for a true jackass (sounds EXTREMELY familiar). Danny McBride (Your Highness) is Dwayne, a go nowhere loser who is living off his dad’s lottery winnings. He takes a lot of (well deserved) abuse from his dad, a retired Marine major (Fred Ward). He comes up with a plan to off his dad for the inheritance so he can open a tanning salon/brothel, and is going to hire a hit man a local stripper hooked him up with (strippers being eminently trustworthy when it comes to planning capital crimes). His best friend Travis (Nick Swardson) is a pyromaniac nut with a talent for explosives. In order to pay the hit man (Michale Pena) he needs $100,000. He cooks up the plan to force a local pizza guy to do it by strapping a bomb to his chest (not the dumbest plan ever).
I think this is where the movie started to really appeal to me. I love white trash humor (having come from a long line of white trash) and can totally see some of my cousins cooking up this plan. There is something about white trash plans that combines real stupidity with real ingenuity that works for me. In this case, the plan is kind of dumb but functional, and the technical expertise it took to make the bomb vest was pretty ingenious.
Anyway, Nick’s best friend is Chet (Aziz Ansari from Parks and Recreation), with whom he shares a real bromance/hate relationship that feels 100% real and was easily the best part of the movie. Chet’s sister is Kate, the aforementioned Pakistani hotty and with whom Nick has had some past history, hence a lot of the friction between Nick and Chet. Nick and Chet decide to make the robbery happen. Humorous bank robbery hijinks ensues. Stuff blows up. Nick shows off his driving skills. Plans go awry.
The stars. Pretty funny IMO. Two stars. The chemistry between both Nick and Chet and Dwayne and Travis felt really real and believable. One star. Dilshad Vadsaria. One star. Danny McBride was particularly funny. One star. Pacing was really well done, with pretty much every scene adding to the movie. One star. Some gratuitous nude scenes at a strip club. One star. While the language and humor was definitely rated R, it didn’t feel like they were doing it on purpose just to be R rated. One star. Great supporting characters. One star. Generally fun experience. One star. Total: ten stars.
Now the black holes. In spite of what I think is a decent, funny movie in the end I feel I am not going to retain a lot from it. One black hole. While I appreciate the gallows humor, the ultimate darkness of the film made me not really sympathetic to any of the characters. Even the so called “good guys” turn out to be self interested jerks towards the end. One black hole. While I am not a super avid CSI fan, I know something about crime and Nick and Chet left a forensic trail big enough to land a 747 on. One black hole. There was on scene in particular that felt fake and dumb (the “rape kit” scene). One black hole. Total: four black holes.
So a grand total of six stars. This is actually pretty good for a non-comic book or sci fi movie from me. Not a good date movie, unless your date is a huge Harold and Kumar fan. See it with a couple friends, and if you loce it up in the car beforehand I don’t think you will lose much. I don’t think you will lose much if you see it on your TV either, so there is not a huge drive to see it on a screen. As a matter of fact, if you managed to pick up a copy for your private collection this is a pretty good “play-something-in-the-background-while-we-drink-beer-and-eat-pizza” movie. Might be worth adding to the collection.
As for the bonus feature for this post, I have seen the death knell of 3D. While waiting on line to buy my ticket I saw a poster for (no joke) Glee in 3D. Yes, annoying technology has now been misapplied in a manner so bizarre as to suck out the last remaining bits of cool like a starving vampire liplocked to it’s jugular and leave it’s moldy corpse rotting down Mundane Alley. This is like using the Batmobile to pick up your kids a daycare. Seriously? Dumb ass kids dancing in 3D? Think about it. The venue that 3D will always work best in is action and/or horror, because the one thing 3D does well is the flying machete coming at your face. The doom of 3D was written when Hollywood realized just putting 3D in the title of a movie is a way of milking that cash cow for a few more bucks. I am officially over 3D. I might see a 3D movie in the future but, given a choice, will save the money and go 2D. Dumb plastic glasses can bite me.
My friend Josh is coming out with some great videos with his crew on the Geek Down show. Check out this best comic movie of the year debate. Not sure how much I can agree with them. The best comic movie of the year was X-Men First Class in my less than humble opinion. However, they raise some interesting points and, as a movie critic (self proclaimed) I like to see what they have going on. Also, the girl they have in the background is really easy on the eyes. They invited me to a party last month that I couldn’t make and now I’m regretting it. The one thing I would say is I’d like to see them buy a couple couches. I find watching them debate while standing around like the are on a playground waiting to get picked for softball a little distracting. I think I would get more from them if the looked like they were relaxing a little, but that’s just me.
My cousin wants to see Tree of Life, so I might have to do a review for a serious movie soon. Meanwhile, I’ll watch another Harry Potter tonight and come up with some more really annoying questions.
More Harry Potter: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
I am sick, so I should have time to finish these off pretty quick. Tonight I saw the Order of the Phoenix. I quite enjoyed it, although I found the lady in pink from the Ministry really annoying. However, if by now Harry hasn’t figured out that whoever takes the position of Professor of Defense Against Dark Magic has ill intents towards him, he must have suffered brain damage when he picked up that nifty scar. The movies have gotten really formulaic in that regards, and it seems obvious that J.K. Rowling has enough love for the other professors to not make any of them the bad guys, so I guess it will continue.
I did enjoy this movie, and magic duel at the end between Voldemort and Dumbledore was pretty damned cool. Not sure what the whole prophesy was all about, but most of the movie seemed pretty cool. I am disappointed that Cedric showed up as a flashback, as I don’t want to see Robert Pattinson gain any more in his so called career, but other than that pretty good. At least there wasn’t any of Dumbledore thrusting his students into dragons mouths or whatever, and he actually managed to act like he cared about Harry for a few minutes.
Of course, I have questions from this movie (Just because I don’t care doesn’t mean I don’t understand image courtesy of the funny t shirt category).
First off, what is up with wands? Is a wizard incapable of casting a spell without one? Seems like a wand should be something to help you focus your inner power to aid in a spell and not necessarily be totally required for a spell. The actual magic must come from the caster, implying that they might be able to cast some simple spells and cantrips without a wand. They don’t use wands to pull up their brooms or fly them. Why, then, do they all act like a fish out of water as soon as they get it knocked out of their hands? Also, if I were a wizard fighting another wizard and managed to knock the wand out of his or her hand, why just leave it lying there on the ground for your enemy to pick up and blast you with. I think as soon as that wand was on the ground I would use another spell to set fire to it. Also, if you lose your wand the first movie seemed to imply you could just buy another. It’s not like you are bound to it for life. So if someone burns up your wand could you just pick up a stick off the ground, or a handy No. 2 pencil? They don’t look like they weigh a lot. If I were going into battle I think I would have like eight on me. That way, when the bad (or good, depending on which side of the room you are on) guy blasts it out of my hand I’d be like “Oh, you have disarmed me! I am helpless before your might”. Then, when they look somewhere else, pull out wand number 2 and blammo! How about a wand in each hand?
Second, are there no rules regarding corporal and/or cruel and unusual punishment at Hogwarts? Is the only thing keeping the professors from torturing the students for screwing up Dumbledore’s morality? Snape seems to have a dark bent. If someone pissed him off could he concoct some kind of horrible pain potion, once Dumbledore had been replaced by the bitch in fuchsia? If there are no rules regarding corporal punishment delivered onto the kids bodies that seems like the first step in other kinds of inappropriate contact. Sounds like the happy hunting ground for sexual predators.
Is Sirius Black dead, or what? I have had a couple friends tell me what a great character he is, but to be honest he hasn’t had a lot of screen time. I suspect he was banished or something and may well resurface later on.
What is the deal with the Order of the Phoenix, or all the other stuff everyone seems to be perfectly aware of except for Harry and me. It’s almost like J.K. Rowlings keeps coming up with things she thinks is cool, and injecting it into the next book but expecting us to believe it was there all the time. It’s like if I painted my living room green but then when people came over and commented on it was like “What are you talking about? It’s always been green.” Last movie it was the Tri Wizard Tournament, the one before that the Dementors. This is actually one of the big failings in the whole Star Wars prequel series, in that Lucas keeps expecting the audience to accept things that we are both told and not told but never shown. You know, I think it’s OK to have something appear in a movie that is actually a new deal and introduce everyone to it. Like if Dumbledore had formed the Order of the Phoenix during the summer while Harry was getting beat up by his big dumb cousin.
You know, I have pretty clear recollections of my horrible life at age 14 (usually at night, waking up in a cold sweat), and I can say that if there is one thing I and all of my friends would never do is name an illicit group we were all part of after the principal of our high school. There is no way we would have called it Krembes’s Kommandos. So what part of Dumbledore’s Army sound even remotely cool to a 14 year old? Odds are they would have come up with something cooler or possibly sexual, like the Hogwarts Hunters or the Portland Protective Association (tell me where that’s from, kids). It seems an extremely obvious ploy to allow Dumbledore to take the fall when they get discovered.
That’s pretty much it. I am going to take a very hot shower in hopes it clears my sinuses and go to bed. Lots of movies coming out this weekend, so look for something new tomorrow. See you soon.
Movie Review: the Help
I was pretty sure this movie was going to make me feel guilty for being white, but honestly it managed to avoid that. I guess it was because the white people in the movie acted in a manner alien to most of my life experience that they felt like a different race entirely. I guess I got open minded at some point.
Anyway, the movie. It’s not my usual fare, but I actually like it a lot. Going in I was afraid I might doze off, but in spite of the lack of explosions, car chases, or anything resembling action the movie held my attention for the entirety of the film. There were some attractive women, but most of them were acting in such a reprehensible manner that I felt not a lot for them. The acting was great all around, the setting and scenery perfect, and the story compelling.
It’s a story told in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi about the African American maids who serviced the homes of white people. They are treated reprehensibly, and within the first ten minutes you hate most of their employers. There is one cute white girl who is trying to write a book about the stories. The biggest hurdle she has to overcome is the very legitimate fear the maids feel about getting not only in trouble or fired but actually attacked and possibly killed for speaking to her, but with the help of one maid, than another, she eventually gathers dozens of embarrassing stories. Most of the movie is more or less a series of embarrassing vignettes for the whites of the town as the maids become more and more comfortable talking to her. Some kinds of justice are served up, and some kind of injustices as well. I won’t say it’s a totally satisfying movie, in that in the end you still feel like certain people really didn’t get a fair deal, but you are not totally overwhelmed by the unfairness of the final outcome.
The stars. Great story. Two stars. Good acting all around. One star. No need to suspend my disbelief. One story. Some funny moments, including one of truly wonderful and hilarious justice. One star. I can honestly say I felt connected with the three main characters, and even with a lot of the supporting characters. One star. They kept the period stuff dead on accurate. One star. Emma Stone (Zombieland, Superbad, super hot) was great. I am almost ready to forgive her for Crazy, Stupid Love. One star. The managed to avoid the temptation to “Hollywood it up” by adding stupid cliche movie crap. One star. There was a nice, well developed sub plot that I think added a lot. One star. Total: ten stars.
Now the black holes. I felt the pacing could have been a little better. Towards the end, after the book was released and we saw all the horrified reactions of the white people, it seemed to drag on without contributing a lot to the film. One black hole. I had multiple moments where I was so frustrated with the injustice of what was going on I wanted to travel back in time and set fire to a couple houses. One black hole. Emma Stone’s character had to live up to the “girls like jerks” stereotype (which, ironically, is exactly what her character did in Crazy, Stupid Love). One black hole. While a good story, the director seems to really be going for the low hanging fruit. You are pulled into the emotions of the film from only the simplest of terms, with no real exploration of the more complicated aspects of 1962 Mississippi, like how can little girls raised lovingly by African American maids grow up to become completely racist a-holes? It’s is touched on briefly in the opening monologue and kind of dropped from there. One black hole. Total: 4 black holes.
Overall a great movie, with a total of 6 stars. That is a high score from me of a movie with no special effects budget. See it in a theater if you can, or NetFlix it when it comes out on DvD.
Incidentally, I donated a bunch of nerd t shirts like this Alien one to my friends at the Geek Down show. I met these guys at a comic book convention earlier this year and they seem to have some really good shows, all nerd related, so you know I have to love them. Check them out if you get a chance.
More of the Harry Potter marathon: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
So this movie adds three elements that up until now have been missing from the movies until now: actual death, hot girls, and Lord Voldemort.
I liked it, and the movies to seem to be getting more adult themed as time progresses. Again, I won’t burden you with a full on review, but will simply record my impressions and the questions that came up during the movie.
So yes, someone dies, and it warmed the cockles of my heart that it was Robert Pattinson. He already has an amazing film franchise in the truly terrible Twilight series, and does not deserve to be attached to an even bigger one. Also, he bugs me. Plus, I still feel some animosity for him for making me watch the horrible acting he did in Water for Elephants. Does he do anything but deadpan? Watching him die did wonders for me. Also, for the first time we get some hot girls on the screen. I mean, sure Hermione is cute, but she’s just a kid. When the girls in the blue outfits sauntered in, my interest level perked. And finally, after hours of everyone losing their water every time someone mentions his name in spite of the fact that he had no real powers, Lord Voldemort finally resurfaced in corporeal form and proceeds to get boondoggled by Harry Potter. If he were really as bad ass as every says shouldn’t he have killed Harry in like five seconds? I mean the kid is essentially a Freshman in high school.
Anyway, here are some questions that occurred to me while I watched this.
First off, Harry and the Weasleys all go to the Quidditch World Cup. Didn’t we establish earlier that some Quidditch games can go on for weeks if not months? How long can an audience sit there for that long? Then, the audience is pretty much filled with wizards and witches, right? Hundreds if not thousands. How do a half dozen guys in KKK hats proceed to tear their camp apart? Shouldn’t there have been several hundred magic wands pointed at them after the first few minutes? For all their magic powers the only thing all the people seemed capable of doing was running and dying. What is the point of all that training? Also, I know for a fact that there had to have been at least a few magic brooms in that camp, as it was for a Quidditch tournament. Why, then, do they all keep wanting to beat their feet?
Actually, this leads me to my next big question, one that has been on my mind for a while. Seems like Hogwarts matriculates several dozen full fledged wizards every year, and now we find out that there are other schools worldwide. The Quidditch audience seems to have a few thousand in residence as well. What, then, do all these magic users do for a living after graduation? Malfoy’s father talked about being rich from magic, but how does he do it? Maybe he uses his powers to influence the stock market, or divines lottery numbers? If they are supposed to keep their powers a secret from we mundane Muggles, what do they do exactly? What exactly is the benefit of a degree from Hogwarts? They can’t all end up 
working at the Ministry of Magic, in spite of appearances. If everyone has approximately the same powers they can’t exactly sell their services to each other, and if they can’t show them to Muggles who exactly are they getting money from? Even if they could sell services to each other, from an economic point of view that is just not a viable system. Eventually the money bleeds out. Maybe they go out and rob from supernatural creatures like the goblins, but isn’t that the thing that Dark Wizards do, which we keep hearing is a bad thing? So how do you make a living as a wizard? Why is Malfoy rich and Weasley poor? (Goblin minions image courtesy of the nerd t shirt category)
That actually leads into yet another question, which is what is up with Dark Wizards? Is being a Dark Wizard like joining the Dark Side in Star Wars? If you tread down that path will it forever taint you? Or is it something where you could do a little and sneak back? Maybe you are Dark most of the time, but donate a lot of money to charity and actively support independent coffee houses? This question has actually been growing on my mind as it is one of those things we are supposed either have read in the books or just accept without being told in any kind of detail.
What is the deal with the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher and betrayal? It seems pretty obvious to anyone with half a brain that whoever they hire for that position will either betray Harry or turn out to have some dark secret. Next movie I recommend Harry just blast the Dark Arts teacher on the first day of class as a precaution. See how good he really is, and who knows? Might head off the inevitable betrayal early on. Also, I would like to point out that once again Harry and his friends completely failed to discover who the villain was until he chose to reveal himself. The Hardy boys they are not. If even one villain opted to not deliver his complete plan and identity in a megalomaniacal rant the he or she could screw with Harry for years, then possibly stick a shiv in his ear while he slept in the infirmary after his next inevitable injury.
Speaking of injury, does Dumbledore get some kind of jollies from seeing underage kids risk their lives and possibly get killed for some esoteric reason? Sure, this Tri Wizard championship might be a big deal, but you are putting your students against dragons. Big, powerful, fire breathing, and eminently pissed off. Honestly, there doesn’t seem much room for high school bullfighting or lion taming last time I checked. Then, in addition to setting the kids up to possibly drown in the Black Lake, he grabs four other completely innocent students (none of them put their names in the Goblet of Fire), knocks them out, and ties them to the bottom of a lake filled with vicious merfolk. Did their parents sign some kind of waiver form for that? I swear when I first saw them I thought they had all drowned. Also, I would like to point out that the loving cup looked very much like a cheap plastic mug laser etched with the word “Wiz” on it. Didn’t really make me think it was thousands of years old.
For that matter, Harry is now in his fourth year, right? And this Tri Wizard thing is a huge competition? Why, pray tell, have we not heard mention of it before? Someone told me it only happened every 25 year or so in the books, but why then was Weasley gung ho to try it when he was 17, in 3 years? By the way, could he and Harry have been bigger putzes at the big dance? Neither one of them seem to have an interest in Heriome, and have two super cute dates but spent the evening sulking about the girl they didn’t bother to ask out. At age 14 (assuming I had a date at a dance and was not by myself in a corner with a head full of mindless violence) if I had any girl remotely attractive on a date with me I sure wouldn’t have been moping around the buffet table. By the way, Weasley in particular managed to ruin the social event of the year for his date. Nice going, jackass.
Finally, I know this is the school of magic, but is there a real reason they don’t bother to use even any technology? I mean, electric lights might be cool, or maybe an iPod full of music. They managed to have a flying car in the last film, and Hagrid had a flying motorcycle in the first one. Some TV might be nice. I really ask this because if I were a wizard headed into possible battle I think I would like to have a fist full of steel to back up my magic. That way, while you are Voldemort are locked in a wand duel you could draw your .357 with your other hand and put an ounce of lead justice over his left eye. Harry gets hurt all the time, so it’s obvious that being a wizard doesn’t make you immune to kinetic energy or blunt force trauma. Blow his brains out, then evaporate his head with your wand and tell everyone you beat him fair and square. I’m just saying.
Anyway, like I keep saying, I am enjoying this series quite a bit, in spite of my many questions. My movie choices are starting to look a little lame, so I think I will try to see another one to write up tomorrow. Talk to you soon.
