The Chronicles of Narnia- BBC series

I've just re-watched my childhood favorite, the BBC miniseries "The Chronicles of Narnia" which had Lion Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, Voyage of the Dawn Treader AND The Silver Chair. Fortunately, it was very enjoyable. Unfortunately, it turns out the special effects could have been made by me and the acting was for the most part worse than a middle school play.

However, I must pay homage to this series that began my love for CS Lewis. I named my first pet Mr. Tumnus because of this series, and I compare the new Disney versions to these mercilessly (and however bad, they are often better in my mind). While the Disney versions have better actors, effects, and a much larger budget that allowed for a richer experience there was something genuine in this version. It felt more homely, more British, and a little bit spookier. Aslan, though he was a rigid puppet that didn't really open his mouth, seemed more real (though isn't that always the case in puppet vs. digital?). And while Reepicheep, that faithful mouse, was Warwick Davis ("Willow", prof. flitwick in Harry Potter) inside a large mouse suit and they never explained why he wasn't mouse sized, I still loved him.

The fight scenes were virtually nonexistent, Prince Caspian looked like he could barely make a sentence let alone lead an army, and while the White Witch wasn't as odd or cunning as in the Disney version she still had a nasty looking grin that scared me as a kid. I think I'll never know exactly what struck me about this series that made me watch it over and over, but there must be something to the heart of the series that makes it a smaller but valiant alternative to the big budget version.

Favorite Herzog Films

My blog is too Herzog-less! Learn about him! Here's his picture from "My Best Fiend". Klaus Kinski is the one with the knife lol.

Favorite Herzog Films In Order

1- Nosferatu- Not only is this amazing Herzog, but I thought this was an INCREDIBLE synthesis of the original film Nosferatu and Bram Stoker's original, both of which are equally important to the celluloid vampire. Very haunting and creepy, great vampires.

2- Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe- I watched this online somewhere (google video?), its only about 20 minutes. He didn't direct it, but it is an introduction to quintessential Herzog, explaining who he is and why he's so crazy awesome. And yeah, he does eat his shoe, he lost a bet.

3- Rescue Dawn- Tons of great actors in this. Jeremy Davies from Lost is amazing, and Steve Zahn proved he can act!

4- Aguirre, Wrath of God- Ultra haunting film about maniacal conquistadors in the jungles of south America. Classic Herzog.

5- Encounters at the End of the World- Stunning, beautiful, lots of fun Herzog interviews with crazy people who live in Antarctica.

6- My Best Fiend, Klaus Kinski- About his love/hate relationship with Kinski. He stars and directs, and shares some CRAZY stories (ex. guinea pigs plus dwarfs plus middle of the jungle= Herzog's life).

7- Fitzcarraldo- More classic Herzog, about a guy who tried to move a ship over a mountain in Peruvian jungle in early 1900's. The madness in the film was echoed in real life, and it was about as difficult to film. His documentary 'Burden of Dreams' is about the making of.

Man on Wire

This years winner of best documentary, "Man on Wire" was a rich, creative, inspiring film of the best kind of documentary which illuminates an aspect of human existence that you hadn't previously thought about but thoroughly respect afterwards.

The film more or less charts events from early 1970's where tight rope walker extraordinaire Phillipe Petit illegally walked across the nearly complete WTC twin towers. The tag line says it was the 'artistic crime of the century', and the film certainly made me agree (mostly because I can't name any other artistic crimes?). Never before had I really given any thought to tightrope walking, as a profession and certainly not as an art form, but Petit is so engaging that I now see the beauty in it. The film, which is mostly told in interviews and re-enactions (which gave it an Errol Morris feel), builds up to this monumental event that Petit had been wanting to do since he had read about the construction of the towers and took literally years of planning to pull it off.

It is mostly through Petit's sheer force of a personality that gives the film its wings. He is enchanting, reminds me a bit of Malcolm McDowell from "Clockwork Orange", and is a dreamer pure and simple. He even enchanted his ex girlfriend enough to make her come to the event and weep at the beauty of it, seriously. You know what happens at the end (the poster kind of shows that they pulled it off), but there is definitely tension, worrying about how they will do it and what will happen after.

One of the greatest triumphs of the film, however, is the way they deal with the obvious tragedy that befell the towers. I don't remember it ever being explicitly mentioned, but everyone involved clearly had a profound love almost for the towers and what they symbolized. Petit knew what they meant before they were built, and this film serves as a tribute to the towers themselves. Its not morbid or sad, but a respectful and inspiring memorial to them. Very deserving of the best doc win.

An Ode to Dystopian Films

I've been thinking a lot about sci-fi movies recently. Watching "Repo" really got under my skin, and made me inspired about movies again, and I was thinking about how awesome it must have been to work on that film and create it. My favorite genre is sci-fi dystopian films, and so I made an ode to them (well, its really mostly about the bad ones).

Oh Dystopian sci-fi films.

I love your silly costumes.

I love your dark shadows.

I adore your attempt at shaking up the social norms.

I like how you try to be groundbreaking, but usually end up sounding like Orwell.

I dislike how you often objectify women or make them androgynous.

I love that you often start a cult following.

I am ashamed when you shamelessly copy a past film.

I love the random actors that star in you, and knowing that they did it for the money.

I wish a new one would come out in theaters every week instead of just on the Sci Fi channel.

Oh dystopian films, how I love thee.

Knowing

This was an f-ing weird movie. Really strange. Why did they make it? What were they thinking? Has Alex Proyas gone insane? Can Nicholas Cage no longer act at all? Why are child actors annoying? To sound like a lame movie reviewer, I came away 'knowing' far less than when I went to see it.

The plot of the movie starts out interesting enough- Nicholas Cage's son gets a letter from a school's time capsule that is a seemingly random series of numbers. Cage, in his infinite wisdom as a metaphysics professor at MIT (yeah, did they have to make it at MIT? Really?), discovers it is a code for all major disasters, listing the dates, places and number dead. The last number is (gasp) coming up soon and says EVERYONE will die. Oh dear. But also, his kid hears things and wears a hearing aid because sounds get mixed up in his head (huh?).

However, (SPOILERS!) the movie takes quite a turn from the usual disaster film. Cage is the son of an austere preacher, and hasn't spoken to him in years, The woman who wrote the letter draws creepy scenes from revelation, and there is quite a lot of talk of heaven and the afterlife. Well, then the film just nosedives down the Christian path, and it turns out that while the earth is doomed from a natural disaster, it has become a sort of end of days last judgement situation with some friendly aliens. And then, the people who are saved from Earth get dropped off in some bizarre Garden of Eden complete with glowing apple tree. Say what?

I love me a good religious spook thriller (see "Haunting of Molly Hartley"), but this was INSANE! It was like BAM Christian mythology. BAM theres a priest. BAM atone for your sins. And all this from the amazing director of "Dark City" and "The Crow".The weirdest thing to me is that none of this was featured in the trailers. It was marketed as a mainstream creepy thriller of some sort. I wonder why.

Twilight AND The Haunting of Molly Hartley: Oddly Similar

So last week at home, enjoying renting crappy movies from the video store, I rented "The Haunting of Molly Hartley", a satanic scary movie that I knew would be bad but awesome, and the teen fandom crazy phenomenon "Twilight" about the vampires in high school. There were, oddly enough, many similarities.

• The basic plot is this: A girl moves to a new town with a new school, to live with only one parent (though she has two) for complex reasons.
• Both girls realize something spooky is going on there, something that wasn't going on at home. Molly Hartley is hearing/seeing creepy things, and Bella in "Twilight" thinks there are vampires.
• Both girls look too skinny and are pale (heroine chic coming back in?)
• Evil forces are trying to kill/eat the girl.
• Both girls fall for a guy who is not what he seems.

I watched them on the same day (oh the joys of vacation) and so was hyper aware of these similarities.

Anyway, onto what I thought of them. I am a die-hard Anne Rice fan (that's "Interview with a Vampire" etc.), so have been very skeptical of this "Twilight" series since it came out. Plus I've seen how crazy the fans were. I can't speak for the book, but the movie was actually alright. It was a solid vampire movie. Not amazing, it's no "Nosferatu", but it was pretty much a teenage romance plus vampire movie, and for what it set out to achieve I think it did that pretty well. Robert Pattison was a believable vampire, with his staring moody eyes and overly-giant looking head. The girl was ok, not my favorite but I think she did pretty well. The best was the vampire 'family' though, they were so cute! Ok, so maybe that's the wrong word, but I liked them. And, interesting vampire lore here, according to the vampires in this film the vampire bite delivers a venom that kills the victim unless the vampire turns them into a vampire too. So no sexy blood sucking, that's reserved only for the bad vampires.

I don't really feel the need to talk about "The Haunting of Molly Hartley", it was a good spooky will-the-devil-win horror movie. Nothing special, but entertaining.

Repo! The Genetic Opera

NEW CULT CLASSIC!!! Organ transplants! Rock Opera! Creepy costumes! Paris Hilton singing! This is a fantastic film that I've heard a lot of little things about but never understood why it was getting so much buzz. Now I know, it's because its a bona fide new classic! The music was amazing, the costumes phenomenal, the art direction impeccable, the cast was crazy awesome, go see this movie! Rent it, have a party, make some jello in a brain mold like you used to for middle school Halloween parties.

In a dystopian future, everyone's bodies are failing, but luckily you can get a quick and easy transplant and little upfront cost, just sign a contract for the payment system. Unfortunately, if you can't make your payments, you'll be getting a visit from the repo man to repossess your organs. Bad news. Sarah Brightman (the woman who inspired Andrew Lloyd Weber to write "Phantom of the Opera" for her) plays an ex-blind opera singer (thanks to some new eyes), Alexa Vega from "Spy Kids" plays a secluded young woman, Anthony Stewart Head from Buffy plays her dad, and oh yeah Paris Hilton plays pretty much herself. That's all the story you need to know, go see it for yourself. The director called it a rock opera mix of "Rocky Horror Picture Show" and "Blade Runner", a fair assessment!

I Love You, Man

I saw a sneak preview of "I Love You, Man", this week. Its a film coming out in about 2 weeks about a serious Bromance. Paul Rudd (I'm so happy he's popular now!), is about to marry Rashida Jones (from the Office), and they both realize he has no real male friends to be his best man. Eventually he meets Jason Segel, and they become the best of friends in a strictly hetero male partner for life way. Hilarity ensues, there are lots of awkward bromance moments, and Rudd and Segel at their finest.

It was a fun popcorn movie. Better than "Step Brothers", but not better than "Forgetting Sarah Marshall". It was not "Knocked Up", but it might have been as good as "Talladega Nights". And it has started a new genre: The romantic Bromance Comedy. Same structure as a normal rom-com, but the main leads are strictly straight. Theres room for more here.

One thing that really held the movie together was the awesome supporting cast. Andy Samberg played the jerky younger gay brother who tries to help Rudd find a friend, and always good J.K. Simmons (the dad from "Juno") played the dad whose best friend is his son. The best though was Jon Favreau, the actor/director who last directed "Iron Man", but who I really like for his short lived show "Dinner for Five". Anyway, Favreau plays the hubby of the maid of honor and despises Rudd with every fiber of his being. He oozed hatred out of his eyes. I felt bad that they made a few fat jokes about him though, because he's a lot skinnier than he has been in recent years!

A few potty jokes, a handful of jokes about marriage, Jason Segel being the cool guy who lives on Venice Beach, and lots of snort inducing Paul Rudd awkwardness, and you've got an entertaining movie. Go see it when it comes out! But don't pay more than $8.50 for it. I'd say its worth more than a bargain show, but not a super expensive weekend show. Long live the bromance film.

The Boondock Saints

I'd had this movie recommended to me so many times I decided to finally sit down and watch it. I had absolutely no idea what it was about, except that maybe it was vaguely religious and that it had a major cult following. So imagine my surprise when I read about what its about and that Willem Dafoe stars as a gay cop in it. But i gave it a try....

....And hated it. I didn't get it. I want to know why people like it. So, let me try and figure out what I didn't like. It wasn't the violence, I thought they did the shoot outs nicely, but maybe because its about 15 years old and we're used to complex shootouts now, but it was just boring mostly. Was it the subject matter? I don't think so, vengeful brothers sounds alright to me. However, there was very very thin connection between most of the scenes, and all we knew most of the time was just that they were going to kill people.

The character of Rocco bugged the hell out of me though.I hated him, I didn't find him funny, I was kind of confused what he was doing. I didn't care at all when he died, and furthermore I was glad because he kept screwing everything up for the brothers all the time! Their relationship, uber-brother love was the only good part of the movie.

Oh and Willem Dafoe in drag was pretty funny. If he was in a scene I payed attention. Billy Connolly was not in it enough and I'm not sure why he wasn't in more. I was bored most of the time, I didn't like it. Tell me why?

Coraline

What a wonderfully creepy fantastical movie! This was based on a short book by Neil Gaiman, fantasy writer extraordinaire, and was made into a stop-motion animated movie by the director of "Nightmare Before Christmas" (Tim Burton didn't actually direct it, just producer/writer). The style was fantastic, it was dark and creepy and colorful, lots of textures. It wasn't as zany as Nightmare sometimes got, part of it was set in the 'real world', it kept it more realistic (well sort of).

So the plot is simple. A girl whose parents are too wrapped up in their work to pay much attention to her move to a new house. Inside the house, she finds a creepy tiny door that leads into a world that is similar to her own, but better...Or is it?? (I could write taglines). The book was creepy and wonderful, but very short, so a lot more had to be added. The kooky neighbors roles were bulked up, and well I think. Also, a 'love interest' type boy was added as well, but he fit in better than I thought he would. Excellent adaptation of a book, not many out there.

One of the BEST things about this film though (besides the art direction), and it was something that I rarely notice, was the soundtrack. I can't think of a more perfect soundtrack that went with a film. It was kind of quirky and strange, but that enhanced the mood of the film in just the right way. There was a lot of strange pianos and violins, some creepy chanting, it reminded me somewhat of the music from "Twelve Monkeys". I'm looking it up on iTunes ASAP.

A note about the genre. With how well this film has been doing so far, and how good it was, I think there is a niche genre of 'young girl in fantasy world' emerging. "Pans Labyrinth" is the best example, but there is also "Mirrormask" that came out at roughly the same time, Terry Gilliams "Tideland" (though I refuse to see it even though I love him) and one coming out this week called "Pheobe in Wonderland". Its a young girl, on the brink of puberty or of adulthood who enters a fantasy world, and then there is the is-she-or-isnt-she making it up to deal with. I think its an important theme to explore, I hope more can come out like this. I certainly identify strongly with it and the characters, I think a lot of girls do.

Also, I'm a nerd and I went on the website. You can make your own 'other self' with button eyes, it was pretty funny: http://www.coraline.com/#/?page=button%20eyes&subPage=0. Go be a nerd too and make your other self.

Jekyll

I feel like a bit of a Robert Louis Stevenson defender after I took 'History of Ideas' here at Pitzer freshman year where we read 1 or 2 of his books (and a bunch of HG Wells) in detail looking at the ideological advances of the industrial revolution within them, and found them to be much deeper than they are reputed to be. So of course, when I saw a series on BBC this summer called "Jekyll", I watched and was intrigued. I only saw one episode (their programming schedule is so strange), but finally went back and watched the whole 6 episode series, so glad I did.

"Jekyll" is about a modern day Jekyll and Hyde situation. A middle aged man finds he starts having blackout spells and eventually realizes he has another person inside his head who takes over savagely for stretches of time. They don't know what happens to each other and have to communicate via recorded messages. Throw in some government conspiracy, some drama with his wife, the convenience of modern technology (GPS tracking while he turns to Hyde) and you got a six hour miniseries. The plot played out well, it connected it to the original Jekyll/Hyde, and it had a very fitting ending. Oh yeah and enormously entertaining. Never had six hours fly by that fast.


The greatness of it was mostly due to the fantastic portrayal by James Nesbitt, an Irish actor who easily switched from exhausted world-weary Dr. Jackman to manaical and high energy Hyde. Part of the story had to do with a physical transformation that happened, making people 'really' believe he had two personalities, and wasn't just crazy. Changing his hair and putting in contacts was all they did (maybe some anti-wrinkle cream too), but that was plenty because he changed his expressions so much. He was in practically every scene and he was so fun to watch. I hope he gets more roles here in the US. Check out the Jekyll grin:

Best part though, was their throwback to Stevenson's original prononciationg of the name (yeah I'm a nerd). Apparently, with Stevensons thick Scottish accent Jekyll was pronounced more like 'gee-ckle', but nobody really stuck to that. They mentioned it several times in the series, loved it.

Little Dieter Needs to Fly

I realized I hadn't watched any Herzog in a while this weekend, so I watched his documentary "Little Dieter Needs to Fly", which I still hadn't seen yet. The funny thing about this is it was made in 1997, but then ten years later Herzog decided to make a fictional film about this guy's story, which was "Rescue Dawn" (AMAZING, I love it, Christian Bale dropped like 15 pounds for the second half of the movie and looks scary, and whoever said Steve Zahn can't act is dead wrong). So I had seen "Rescue Dawn" already so knew what the story was about, but heard it from the horses mouth.

Turns out the guy was living on Mt. Tamalpais in the Bay Area, too bad I didn't see this documentary until after he died, I definitely would have gone to visit him. His story was incredible, and he had such a positive enlightened attitude about it. Yeah crashing in Vietnam and being held by the Viet Cong for a few months with barely any food was terrible, and then escaping with another guy only to have his head cut off in front of you is traumatic, but this guy had the balls to go BACK to Vietnam and show Herzog what it looked like. They even hired some Vietnamese guys with guns to stand around him so he could show the camera what it looked like, and at one point had them tie his hands and run around the jungle. That poor guy, I don't know if Herzog talked him into it, he seemed ok, but that must have been traumatic to be relieving those memories in near identical conditions.

The most interesting part for me was comparing this to "Rescue Dawn". There were a lot of things that the guy mentioned (like his tough childhood growing up in Black Forest of Germany during the war and having no food to eat) or stories that he told that seemed very elemental to who he was, but that Herzog decided not to include in "Rescue Dawn". One was a really heart wrenching story about his fight to keep the engagement ring he had, refusing to let his captors take it off him. Overall, it was a classic Herzog documentary that got to the kooky, heartfelt core of everyone, and told a story in a very linear and illustrative way, which is different from many other documentarians.