beasts of the southern wild

Just saw Beasts of the Southern Wild. It’s about a young girl named Hushpuppy, played by Quvenzhané Wallis, as she lives in this delta community, similar to the swamps and bayous, at the end of the world. She has a father figure who’s tough love is preparing her for independent survival. This is very similar to The Road, just not as bleak.

The good; Wallis as Hushpuppy is brilliant, what a lovely young actress, I can’t say enough about what she delivers onscreen.
There’s also a believability in the way they create this community in what is a post-apocalyptic world. Instead of radiation and overcasted skies, this is a world where the ice at the caps melted and things are flooded. The shanties that they built for sets are great.
The aurochs are amazing, these creatures are in fact a reality, they are the ancestors of the modern cattle. To have these massive creatures stampede their way through the movie is wonderful, and there’s also use of model miniatures, I love that lost art.

The bad; the beginning of the movie is pretty bad in the way it was shot. Everything was handheld for no apparent reason, and also out of focus. There is a focus puller job… did they not hire for this position?? I really did not care for the way the kept everything in an almost macro setting, I want to see the world that these characters live in, I want to see the wonderful sets that were built.

*SPOILER* They spent a lot of time creating and establishing the community that Hushpuppy lives in, then there’s some disaster relief?? That completely threw me out of the movie. The way that the community in the delta operates shows at least fifty years of “degradation” in order for them to operate in the way they do. There’s a superstitious way of medicine, there’s farming and fishing, there are just so many signs that point to life being without modern comforts for at least a generation… then all of that is completely trashed when we see a helicopter and then our group is taken to a disaster relief center with what looks like late eighties medical staff. Ummm, what? This portion of the movie could’ve been complete cut out and it would’ve been better. Or… if they wanted to include this social commentary on things, the medical people should’ve been more futuristic, almost Star Trek-y in nature, or just hinted to and not shown at all. The helicopter should’ve been a space shuttle far off in the sky or something. *END SPOILER*

The film’s slow pace doesn’t add anything for me, it’s trying to show a slice of life, but ultimately bores me at points. And the payoff with the aurochs was a let down, or non-existant. This started off as a play and then was adapted in to the movie, it shows that it was a play and probably a good one, but when adapting for the silver screen it needed more work.

Overall, interesting concept with social commentary, but skip it. The message gets a little lost along the way. The music in the film is wonderful, just wish that the plot could’ve been up to par.

modern family

http://tv.yahoo.com/news/-modern-family–cast-sues-20th-tv-as-contract-renegotiation-turns-ugly–exclusive-.html

The cast of “Modern Family” has declared war on producer 20th Century Fox Television.

Sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that cast members Ty Burrell, Julie Bowen, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Eric Stonestreet and Sofia Vergara have filed suit today in Los Angeles Superior Court to void their contracts. The legal theory, according to sources who have seen the lawsuit, is that their deals violate California’s “7 Year Rule,” which prohibits personal services contracts for longer than 7 years. This tactic is a common one for actors who seek to void contracts during renegotiations for increased compensation.

The move comes amid a salary standoff that has already delayed today’s scheduled table read that would have marked the start of the fourth season of Modern Family, one of TV’s top-rated comedies. The cast, minus Ed O’Neill, who is paid more than his co-stars and is negotiating separately, has hired litigator Jeff McFarland with LA’s Quinn Emanuel firm and are pressing their case in court.

UPDATE: A source close to the negotiations tells THR that O’Neill has decided to join his castmembers as a plaintiff in the lawsuit out of solidarity. O’Neill has his own salary beef with 20th TV but he is paid on a different track and was thus not involved in the original plans to sue.

Ha, haha, ha HA!

 

Give them more money!  For shame fox… for shame…

the dark knight rises

Just saw The Dark Knight Rises. It’s about Bruce Wayne and his one man war on crime. This time it’s eight years after the last movie, The Dark Knight, Bruce’s body is worn down (like an athlete) and so is his faith in people. There’s a plot to destroy Wayne Enterprises and Gotham, which bring both Bruce and Batman out of “retirement.”

The good; the movie is about three hours long, but it certainly doesn’t feel like it. It had me pretty much on the seat of my pants the entire time, beautifully edited.

The acting is great. Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle, love me some Anne Hathaway. Much like Charlize Theron in Prometheus, Anne Hathaway’s in that catsuit most of the time, no complaints there.
Gary Oldman as the ever faithful Gordon.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Blake.  Tom Hardy as Bane.  Michael Caine as Alfred the father-figure.  Everyone delivers a wonderful performance.

The Bat, flying thing, what’s great about these movies is the science and logic behind the technology, they make it believable. From the movie physics of the Bat-Pod to the Bat vehicle, I just love it all cause when you watch it move on screen you think, “yeah, that’s how that would move.”

The bad; oddly enough, I do have some complaints. There wasn’t enough Batman, when you’re watching the movie you don’t really notice this, but thinking back, Bruce Wayne is Batman in the end of the first act, and then at the of the third act, I kinda wanted more Batman-time… on screen that is.
Bane’s voice – in the comic books he’s supposed to be Latin-American, I don’t know what accent he has in the movie, but it’s obviously dubbed and very stage present-ish.  In a shot where he’s in the far background of the scene his voice is still coming in very present at the center channel, that bugged me.

*SPOLIER* When Bane breaks Batman’s back, it doesn’t take him long to recover, there could’ve been more passage of time at this point. His back goes from a vertebrae protrusion to doing push ups and scaling the wall to freedom.

*SPOILER* The ending, very easy, almost too easy, and predictable. Much like Nolan’s previous movie Inception, this one ends in a montage and we’re given information visually. Alfred is away on holiday and sees Bruce just like he’d imagined years and years before Batman showed up, he’s sitting at a table with Selina. I wonder how it would’ve been if they’d taken the ambiguity of Inception’s ending and applied it to The Dark Knight? Leaving us with Alfred’s forming smile instead of cutting to Bruce at the table? And then to have Blake’s character’s real name be Robin? That almost felt like the studio pushed that onto the movie. Don’t get me wrong, I liked that the cowl and mantle would be passed along, but why dumb it down?

Overall, I enjoyed the movie, despite the criticisms I state above. I guess I’m so critical of this new film because I extremely enjoyed the previous films
Definitely worth watching on the big screen, and what a way to end a trilogy.

sdcc 2012 + photo update

Wednesday.  On the drive down to San Diego traffic was so slow that I could use my phone without being a danger to society… is everyone else going to Comic Con?

Then in the evening I passed by the Arco on Paradise Valley Rd and Meadowbrook on my way to get some Mexican Food.

Thursday morning, let the trek begin…

prometheus – the one that never should’ve been made

Just saw Prometheus, I waited so long, should’ve waited longer.

It’s about a team of scientists that go in search of a planet in which they believe is where life on Earth originated. They take two years of space travel to finally arrive, they start exploring this alien world and some stuff happens, oozy things creep out and lives are at stake… because things aren’t what they seem.

The good; the set, I love Alien so much because of the sterile quality that the sets gave. So it’s nice to this theme revisited.
The actors are great, they act the crap out this movie. Fassbender as the android David is wonderful, I also like that he spends his free time watching Lawrence of Arabia. There are a lot of nods to previous Alien movies, most of which are the Engineers.

The bad; ohh, ohhhh, where to start? I know, Lindelof, please stop writing features, I blame you for Cowboys and Aliens, and now you can add Prometheus to that list.

The opening consists of an Engineer… a tall muscular pasty bald greek adonis… he opens a coffee thermos and then proceeds to ingest the black oil from The X-Files, he starts convulsing and then falls in to the water fall. His body starts to decay, what was the purpose of this scene? We never revisit it.

*SPOILERS* and there are plenty.
The producing powers of Ridley Scott and Walter Hill could not mask the lackluster writing of Lindelof, this movie is much like any Shyamalan movie, wonderful set up in the first act, but please, learn to write a third act.
When the “alien” finally shows up, I didn’t want it, because the movie didn’t earn the right to show us that.
The characters are very very cardboard, which in the right hands (James Cameron ala Avatar) are actually ok, but here we get a geologist who gets lost in the caves trying to get back to the spaceship… when he’s the one that mapped the caves with his Phantasm-like mapping spheres.
He’s lost with the biologist and while they’re trapped in the caves due to a storm, they come across a tentacle-like snake creature that pops out of the black ooze, he’s drawn to it like candy, ummm what? It’s an alien world, beware!
Charlize Theron looks great in her skin tight space suit, but she looks an awful lot like David, the android, so throughout the movie we’re led to believe she could be an android, but she’s not… why do I care? This goes nowhere.
They find an Engineer, Space-Jockey for those who know, in stasis. As soon as they wake him up he starts killing everyone… why?
The female lead scientist deduces that the Engineers created humans… they then created the xenomorphs… they then want to send the xenomorphs to Earth to kill the humans, but they changed their minds… how did she figure that out?
The Prometheus’ crew just up in arms decides that they must sacrifice themselves to save Earth, by ramming their ship in to the Engineers’ ship, we hardly got to know these guys, let alone that they would be in character by sacrificing themselves.
The Engineers’ ship is shaped like a horseshoe, it crashes to the planet on its side and starts to roll, if you’re running away from this rolling horseshoe… run to the left… or run to the right… not in a zigzag in the exact path of the rolling horseshoe spaceship. Then the rolling stops and it’s now falling on its side, run in the middle, where there’s space inbetween the two ends of the horseshoe. I guess you can be book smart but not street smart.
Then, David’s decapitated head and body are taken by the lead female scientist, Dr. Shaw – that’s her name! and go in to another space ship, what is this? Another odd couple roadtrip movie in space? And this was the tag of that? Sigh…

Overall, skip this movie, save your money. The movie poses questions and interesting topics but never addresses any of them. It’s like someone threw in all the ideas about space exploration and questioning human beings’ origin in the grand scheme of things, and then just left them there without actually pursuing the answers. There are some great things in this movie, but unlike Kingdom of Heaven, I don’t think a director’s cut can make this movie coherent or enjoyable. But don’t take it from me, check this out as well.

http://redlettermedia.com/red-letter-media-talks-about-prometheus-spoilers/

Thanks for this one Brian;

http://insidemovies.ew.com/2012/07/05/prometheus-blu-ray-deleted-scenes/

the amazing spider-man

Saw The Amazing Spider-Man, it is a reboot. We all know the story, nerd-loner Peter Parker gets bitten by a radio-active spider, he gains super powers and his Uncle Ben dies in the process. He learns some life lessons and is the better for it. But this film does add something different.

The good; I like the swinging scenes, I didn’t think I was going to like the video game like FPS POV angle, but it worked, and it wasn’t over used. They got a lot of those classic Spider-Man poses in, always love when the film imitates the comic. The fight scenes with the Lizard are very well done, I love the use of the web-shooters and how they’re choreographed in to the fighting.

Andrew Garfield doesn’t do a bad job, he’s like-able enough and believable enough as the nerd high schooler. Denis Leary is great as George Stacey, I’ll probably enjoy everything he does anyway.

Without spoiling too much, we get Peter’s parents’ backstory, which is a nice touch. But that plot line, along with the murderer of Uncle Ben go unresolved by the end of the movie. Yet, it didn’t bother me at all when the credits roll… strange.

There’s a rather cheesy scene as we approach the climax of the third act that involves Spider-Man being helped by the “common working-class man,” but it works.

The bad; a lot of CG usage. I miss having a stunt man that has the physical prowess to perform what’s needed of the character. I miss practical effects, while it takes limitations off of the filmmakers we also lose a sense of, “wow, how’d they do that?” I remember watching this;

Sure it’s dated, but it’s a guy actually climbing up a building and swinging and doing stuff.

We don’t get any resolution with Uncle Ben’s murderer, Peter goes out in search of this thug and doesn’t find him like he did in the previous franchise. We also never find out the whole truth of what happened to his parents… I know I put this in the good section, but why were we given these plot threads to begin with? If they’re going to reboot the franchise and start over with another origin story, why not give us this “new” part of the origin? Why does everything have to be a trilogy these days?

The scene where the Lizard emerges from the sewers and on to New York’s streets with his bag of “goodies” is so the Sony lot, hahaha, but that wouldn’t bug anyone else but THIS GUY.

Overall, I actually did enjoy this movie. It wasn’t the best, but considering that first trailer left such a bad taste in my mouth, my expectations were low, then it turns out that it isn’t the worst of the worst, so I was able to enjoy this. They mentioned Norman Osborn without showing him, such a delight. Dangling plotlines were unresolved, but masked well so that I didn’t care while watching the movie. I wish they would’ve had more of the Jekyll/Hyde thing going on with the Lizard. Andrew Garfield and Marc Webb do nicely, AND we got a movie where The Daily Bugle wasn’t a set with J. Jonah Jameson, I’m impressed with what they were able to do.

*SPOILER* or speculation… there is a scene during the credits, so stay and read the names of all the people that worked so hard to bring you this film, cause you should… know how to read that is, hahaha.
But Doc Connors is placed in prison, he then sees and talks to a mysterious man… who is this person? We never see his face. Is he the voice that’s talking to Connors in his sewer lab? Is Connors crazy and talking to a dual personality? Is it Norman Osborn? Certainly a man that rich can buy his way in to prison. Or… is it Richard Parker? Since we never really find out what happened to him??? Dun dun… dunnnnn, Kurtzman and Orci better not screw up the sequel… one can hope write? See what I did there??