More reviews
Seriously, at this point I should either get a dedicated movie review blog, or give up on the notion that Im ever gonna use this for anything else.
I dont believe in New Years resolutions, but if I had to make one, it would be to keep up with my movie reviews. I keep on getting some encouragement that I should maybe consider this hobby a bit more seriously. While Im not sure if I wanna go that route, it still feels like a good idea to keep up with this. Sooooo, this week's movie adventures (and some more special B'way fun)
Seven Pounds
Most reviews of this movie panned it. Yet, the whole Im-gonna-tell-you-very-little-about-the-plot-and-make-a-big-\m/-deal-about-it-being-a-mystery aspect of the trailer and promo tactics, that I had to go. And honestly, I dont really think it was all that bad. Granted, Im usually fairly lenient on bad movies. We all know that I can recognize a movie as bad, yet still enjoy it for its entertainment value. Likewise, I can recognize a movie as good, but not enjoy it at all. Thus is the paradox of movies with Dawn Dawn. Anyhoo, I digress. I dont think the entire movie was a failure. I think they took a big risk with the structure of the movie, and that failed.
Im gonna try to avoid being spoiler-tastic as much as possible, so there wont be much about plot details. Basically as it started off, there was a big WTF element. I couldnt quite grasp what was happening, other than the fact that it was weird. About 20-30 min in, I was able to figure it out...all of it. But then, knowing how it was gonna play out, made the film a lot less powerful than I think they were aiming for. Interviews with Rosario Dawson had her daring the audience to make it through the movie without crying. Um yeah, sorry, I didnt cry. Okay, but what if I hadnt figured out the point of the story? Then, yes, the ending would have been a big powerful tear jerker (dont think I woulda actually cried though. THat takes a lot for me). But the whole two hours leading up to it would have been confusing, boring, and simply stupid. So would I have cared by the time I reached the end? Probably not. At least for me, as the type of person who needs to know how things work (for example, I like magic shows, but the fun for me is in watching and trying to guess how they do it), figuring it out early was the way to go. And seriously, it wasn't that hard people. They give you all of the clues early on. It wasn't exactly Mulholland Drive.
General comments on the film, Will Smith's character went to MIT. That's prolly the other reason why I can't knock it completely. And bonus points for Woody Harrelson being in the movie. Love him. But yeah, nothing else particularly remarkable about the movie, postive or negative.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
EW posted their list of 25 movies to see before the Oscars. This was at the top. I pretty much ran to the theater, hanging my head in shame for not having the seen the first movie on the list even though I'd already seen the next 6 in a row. Now having seen it, I do agree with most of the nomination buzz its getting. I dont think its quite worthy of any major wins.
The movie started off pretty strong. Very fun and fantastical. 6-year-old-grandpa-Benjamin was adorable. Totally fell in love with his character from the getgo. And then he left home for a bit, and thats where it started to lose me. It seemed to just go on and on without all that much happening. Timmy saw it with me, and his comment (that I agree with) is that it was basically Forrest Gump (with Cate Blanchett as his Jenny), but longer and less good. I think part of the reason for the less good was that it was more epic with less purpose. Where the dynamics of Gump was constantly changing to reflect the era he was in, commenting on the various historical events, Button was pretty static. Other than the characters aging (in one direction or the other) nothing really changed and it relied too heavily on the whole philosphical agenda (thats not quite the right word, but its the best I got at the moment).
Also, I \m/ love Brad Pitt. Always have. Forever will. I apologize for the teenybopper-ness of my next comment, but I actually think Button at whatever Brad's current age is looked even hotter than Brad usually does simply from comparing him to how much older he was in previous scenes. But besides that, his is a fascinating character and I think Brad nailed him pretty well at all the different ages. I feel almost blasphemous for saying this, but I didnt really care too much for Cate Blanchet. Maybe it was more the character than the performance, but I just didnt like her. The young, 20's age version was also a bit distracting. Im just not sure what went wrong.
Overall, while I guess it important to at least go through the different stages of Button's life, it was a bit too much on the epic side. Woulda been better if they'd tightened it up and chopped off an hour. Still, though, fun movie and worth a watch. Just make sure you're rested up before you go.
Equus
This past Sat I made it down to NYC to see Equus. That was fun. This play has been haunting me since high school. The group I did Forvm with back home did Equus right before. But since I didnt care about theater at that point, I didnt bother to go see it. And then I always wondered about it. Ya'll who know me know that I like dark psychological thriller type stories, so you shouldn't be surprised that Ive been so intrigued by it. Anyways, the stars aligned so that the trip was feasible, and I figured seeing Daniel Radcliffe would be reason enough to justify going that far to see it.
It was really good. Got me thinking about a whole lotta stuff. Even made me sleep a bit uneasy on the bus back (although that coulda just been that I hadnt been feeling too great that day). There's still a lot of it I dont quite get that Im trying to process, but seriously it was worth the wait. And this production was infinitely better than the one back home coulda possibly been.
Radcliffe was fantastic. And I loved his character so much. I can see why he was so drawn to it. He was so intense and so funny (when it called for it) and just really good. Richard Griffiths was also really good. The only one I didnt like was the lady playing the mom. Couldnt stand her. She had this deep voice that sounded like she was crying and moaning as she was talking--which was often.
I also really liked how they did the horses. They looked so cool. The horses were six guys wearing a sheer brown shirt and brown pants. They had these wirey silver horse heads and wore this big wire platform shoes with horseshoes on the bottom. It did get a little weird how much the actors were rubbing the horse's bodies (like when they were grooming them or something) but ultimately I liked it. And there were some awesome aweome lighting effects. So the the stage was pretty bare. The outer edges of the stage had these things that looked like columns that actually opened up to represent stalls. Then there was a round sorta track with a square platform in the middle. They had four double size pippen boxes on the platform that they moved around. Technically all of the scenes took place in the mental hospital, but they'd reenact flashbacks. There was this one at the beach where they lit the platform to look like sand and the track to look like water. It was so pretty. And later in the barn, they pushed together the pippen boxes and lit the pile of them to look like a haystack.
Also really cool.
And yes, I saw Harry Potter's magic wand, but that was so not the point.
I dont believe in New Years resolutions, but if I had to make one, it would be to keep up with my movie reviews. I keep on getting some encouragement that I should maybe consider this hobby a bit more seriously. While Im not sure if I wanna go that route, it still feels like a good idea to keep up with this. Sooooo, this week's movie adventures (and some more special B'way fun)
Seven Pounds
Most reviews of this movie panned it. Yet, the whole Im-gonna-tell-you-very-little-about-the-plot-and-make-a-big-\m/-deal-about-it-being-a-mystery aspect of the trailer and promo tactics, that I had to go. And honestly, I dont really think it was all that bad. Granted, Im usually fairly lenient on bad movies. We all know that I can recognize a movie as bad, yet still enjoy it for its entertainment value. Likewise, I can recognize a movie as good, but not enjoy it at all. Thus is the paradox of movies with Dawn Dawn. Anyhoo, I digress. I dont think the entire movie was a failure. I think they took a big risk with the structure of the movie, and that failed.
Im gonna try to avoid being spoiler-tastic as much as possible, so there wont be much about plot details. Basically as it started off, there was a big WTF element. I couldnt quite grasp what was happening, other than the fact that it was weird. About 20-30 min in, I was able to figure it out...all of it. But then, knowing how it was gonna play out, made the film a lot less powerful than I think they were aiming for. Interviews with Rosario Dawson had her daring the audience to make it through the movie without crying. Um yeah, sorry, I didnt cry. Okay, but what if I hadnt figured out the point of the story? Then, yes, the ending would have been a big powerful tear jerker (dont think I woulda actually cried though. THat takes a lot for me). But the whole two hours leading up to it would have been confusing, boring, and simply stupid. So would I have cared by the time I reached the end? Probably not. At least for me, as the type of person who needs to know how things work (for example, I like magic shows, but the fun for me is in watching and trying to guess how they do it), figuring it out early was the way to go. And seriously, it wasn't that hard people. They give you all of the clues early on. It wasn't exactly Mulholland Drive.
General comments on the film, Will Smith's character went to MIT. That's prolly the other reason why I can't knock it completely. And bonus points for Woody Harrelson being in the movie. Love him. But yeah, nothing else particularly remarkable about the movie, postive or negative.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
EW posted their list of 25 movies to see before the Oscars. This was at the top. I pretty much ran to the theater, hanging my head in shame for not having the seen the first movie on the list even though I'd already seen the next 6 in a row. Now having seen it, I do agree with most of the nomination buzz its getting. I dont think its quite worthy of any major wins.
The movie started off pretty strong. Very fun and fantastical. 6-year-old-grandpa-Benjamin was adorable. Totally fell in love with his character from the getgo. And then he left home for a bit, and thats where it started to lose me. It seemed to just go on and on without all that much happening. Timmy saw it with me, and his comment (that I agree with) is that it was basically Forrest Gump (with Cate Blanchett as his Jenny), but longer and less good. I think part of the reason for the less good was that it was more epic with less purpose. Where the dynamics of Gump was constantly changing to reflect the era he was in, commenting on the various historical events, Button was pretty static. Other than the characters aging (in one direction or the other) nothing really changed and it relied too heavily on the whole philosphical agenda (thats not quite the right word, but its the best I got at the moment).
Also, I \m/ love Brad Pitt. Always have. Forever will. I apologize for the teenybopper-ness of my next comment, but I actually think Button at whatever Brad's current age is looked even hotter than Brad usually does simply from comparing him to how much older he was in previous scenes. But besides that, his is a fascinating character and I think Brad nailed him pretty well at all the different ages. I feel almost blasphemous for saying this, but I didnt really care too much for Cate Blanchet. Maybe it was more the character than the performance, but I just didnt like her. The young, 20's age version was also a bit distracting. Im just not sure what went wrong.
Overall, while I guess it important to at least go through the different stages of Button's life, it was a bit too much on the epic side. Woulda been better if they'd tightened it up and chopped off an hour. Still, though, fun movie and worth a watch. Just make sure you're rested up before you go.
Equus
This past Sat I made it down to NYC to see Equus. That was fun. This play has been haunting me since high school. The group I did Forvm with back home did Equus right before. But since I didnt care about theater at that point, I didnt bother to go see it. And then I always wondered about it. Ya'll who know me know that I like dark psychological thriller type stories, so you shouldn't be surprised that Ive been so intrigued by it. Anyways, the stars aligned so that the trip was feasible, and I figured seeing Daniel Radcliffe would be reason enough to justify going that far to see it.
It was really good. Got me thinking about a whole lotta stuff. Even made me sleep a bit uneasy on the bus back (although that coulda just been that I hadnt been feeling too great that day). There's still a lot of it I dont quite get that Im trying to process, but seriously it was worth the wait. And this production was infinitely better than the one back home coulda possibly been.
Radcliffe was fantastic. And I loved his character so much. I can see why he was so drawn to it. He was so intense and so funny (when it called for it) and just really good. Richard Griffiths was also really good. The only one I didnt like was the lady playing the mom. Couldnt stand her. She had this deep voice that sounded like she was crying and moaning as she was talking--which was often.
I also really liked how they did the horses. They looked so cool. The horses were six guys wearing a sheer brown shirt and brown pants. They had these wirey silver horse heads and wore this big wire platform shoes with horseshoes on the bottom. It did get a little weird how much the actors were rubbing the horse's bodies (like when they were grooming them or something) but ultimately I liked it. And there were some awesome aweome lighting effects. So the the stage was pretty bare. The outer edges of the stage had these things that looked like columns that actually opened up to represent stalls. Then there was a round sorta track with a square platform in the middle. They had four double size pippen boxes on the platform that they moved around. Technically all of the scenes took place in the mental hospital, but they'd reenact flashbacks. There was this one at the beach where they lit the platform to look like sand and the track to look like water. It was so pretty. And later in the barn, they pushed together the pippen boxes and lit the pile of them to look like a haystack.
Also really cool.
And yes, I saw Harry Potter's magic wand, but that was so not the point.