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movie review

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

I’ve owned the soundtrack for this movie since it came out, actually, and I never bothered to watch the movie itself. I actually liked the first Transformers movie all right, in that sort of well it’s got explosions and giant robots and it makes okay background noise kind of way. Revenge of the Fallen left me in an underwhelmed place of slow-motion explosions that I didn’t manage to return to again until I had the misfortune of watching Ghost Rider 2.

Though as an aside, I’d still rather watch Nic Cage chew the scenery any day than Shia LeBouf whine.

The thing is, I actually really like the soundtracks for these movies. They make excellent writing music even if the movies themselves make me hope for a nuclear winter. What I’d like to know is how did movies this incoherent manage to have such nice music?

It’s a zen riddle.

I decided to watch Dark of the Moon tonight, just because why not, I had some braincells to kill.

Well. It sure was a thing.

I wish I could write a mocking examination of the reality-bending badness of this movie, the way io9 did back when it came out. But I’ve been working 10+ hour days all week and spending most of my time having my neurons slowly drilled into submission by Microsoft Powerpoint. I just don’t have it in me.

I am as incoherent as Dark of the Moon.

The movie can’t decide if it’s a romantic comedy, a stupid buddy comedy, an action movie, or something else entirely and I don’t even care. I don’t know who Leonard Nimoy owed money to, but I can’t fathom why he got within a thousand miles of this pulsating mass of disagreeing plotlines. Shia LeBouf seems to be a three-year old trapped in a man’s body, vacillating between soulful eyes and quivering lower lip and incoherent tantrums of petulant rage. And how the hell could something make me miss Megan Fox? How is such a thing possible unless we truly do exist in a godless universe of pain?

I never thought a movie could make me long for the smooth and logical plotline of Ghost Rider 2, but Dark of the Moon managed it. It would be a better movie, and more coherent, if you just cut together all the scenes of the Transformers fighting and just enjoyed the pure, explosion-laden eye candy. It would also be shorter, which I consider a good thing, considering every scene involving the human characters is approximately seventeen years long.

The good news is, I will still be able to listen to the glorious soundtrack without having it ruined for me, because nothing in this movie made any kind of impact beyond a vague existential discomfort caused every time Shia LeBouf screamed like an eight-year-old girl.

Next time, self, remember that curiosity caused the cat to watch really terrible movies.

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movie review

Not So Amazing

To reward myself for surviving the never-ending defensive driving course from somewhere not nearly cool enough to be hell, I went to a movie. The only thing I felt motivated to see was The Amazing Spiderman.

My reaction was: …meh.

Yes, I know my nerd card deserves to be taken away. Try it, buddy. I know kung fu.

Part of the problem here is that I just wasn’t all that excited about it to begin with. Not because I have a problem with Spiderman as a character, but let’s be honest. The last of the Tobey Maguire Spider man movies was only five years ago. And maybe you’ve managed to forget the horror that was emo Peter Parker and the inexplicable dance scene, but it’s still pretty well seared into my brain. While I can normally get my juices going for a reboot (Batman Begins anyone?) I need a little more than five years.

Spiderman, how can we miss you if you never go away?

Honestly, I’m concerned that the cycle is ever-shortening between movie release and the following remake of the movie. We may be approaching some sort of remake critical gravitational collapse point, where the remake and movie it’s remaking are released simultaneously, signalling we’ve crossed a ghastly event horizon where Hollywood has just shrunk into a singularity clothed in nothing but special effects. Spaghettification and increasing popcorn prices will inevitably follow.

My enthusiasm level was admittedly pretty low going in. But I was prepared to be entertained, and I certainly was. Don’t get me wrong; I didn’t emerge from this movie bearing Prometheus-levels of steaming nerdrage. Rather, I left the theater with the only thought on my mind as, “Man, I could murder the shit out of a taco salad right about now.”

So that’s really to say, the movie didn’t make much of an impact on me.

It’s got good things going for it. Andrew Garfield is definitely a superior Spiderman compared to Tobey Maguire. The dialog for Spiderman was generally superior as well – finally, all the snark and sarcasm that the comics promised us for years! (Plus, the stunts were definitely better, and hey – electronic web shooters!)

I can’t say I’m impressed with Gwen Stacy as a character over Mary Jane Watson, not that this is necessarily Emma Stone’s fault. (And she had some good on-screen chemistry with Andrew Garfield so I bought their relationship no problem.) There are other problems I have with Gwen Stacy, but it’s all said much better here than I could, other to note that yeah, she did seem a little too perfect. Mary Jane definitely has a much richer internal life going in the first movie than poor Gwen Stacy did in this one.

I think part of the “meh” problem was have the Lizard as the villain. He wasn’t all that exciting, and Rhys Ifans tried his darndest, but he’s no Willem Dafoe. With an unexciting villain, the plot of the week “oh no the city is doomed” wasn’t anything to really write home about.

So it was a fun way to spend an evening, and I don’t regret what I paid for the ticket. But I’m not excited for a sequel the way I was with the original Spiderman, even if Tobey Maguire wasn’t really the ideal Peter Parker.

It’s not you, Amazing Spiderman, it’s me. You should have given me more time to get over the other guy first so I could have come at you with fresh eyes and renewed enthusiasm. Too late.

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books review

Among Others

I don’t think I would have read Among Others (Jo Walton) if it weren’t for its Hugo nomination. That would have been a serious shame, since it’s a beautiful and interesting book. I definitely think that it deserves the nomination.

SPOILERS FOLLOW


Sort of like Brave, I think Among Others isn’t really best served by the way it’s advertised on the back blurb. The back is all about the conflict between Mori and her mother, and makes it sound as if there’s going to be some sort of epic battle that we’re building toward. Which I guess could be interesting and all, but is really not as beautiful as what the book actually does.

Yes, there is a final confrontation with Mori’s mom at the end. It takes up less than a page. I felt it was almost anticlimactic, after what the back cover implies.

No, rather it’s a book about grief, and loss, and moving on, and growing up, and being your own person in the face of a culture that doesn’t understand you. It’s about finding people who like you for yourself instead of trying to force yourself to be another person for the sake of others. It’s about knowing when to say no to what others want and do the brave, scary thing of deciding that it’s your life and you have to live it. It’s about so many big, fantastic things. I suppose it would have been hard to cram that on the back cover, but still.

The main character, Mori, is vivid and interesting. The book is written to be her diary, so it’s very conversational and frank. Not only that, but frank about things that normal fifteen-year-olds things about (like sex) without apology or obfuscation. I found that very refreshing. Fifteen wasn’t that long ago for me, and a lot of what she says still speaks to awkward, teenaged me that hides in the back of my head.

Most charming was that Mori is, herself, an enormous scifi and fantasy literature geek. She talks a lot about what is now considered somewhat classic scifi/fantasy, since the book is set in 1979 and 1980. I found it fun to read someone’s delight as the books were coming out. Since I wasn’t even born until 1980, I can’t say if it’s 100% accurate on what was out and when, but I’m going to assume it’s pretty accurate. I strangely enjoyed Mori talking about Dragonflight and Dragonquest and eagerly awaiting The White Dragon. By the time I got to those books, they were all out and I could consume them in one long stretch. (Other than All the Weyrs of Pern, which is one I eagerly awaited myself.)

So there’s a lot of scifi/fantasy bringing Mori closer to others when she finds people with similar interests. It’s something I identified with a lot, and also not something that often gets touched on.

It’s a quick, easy, and companionable read. So far, I think I’ll have a hard time choosing between it and Deadline, though I still need to read Leviathan Wakes.

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books review

Book: Twilight of the Elites

This book is both interesting, and depressing.

Interesting, of course, in the way just about anything Chris Hayes decides to talk about is worth reading. What actually motivated me to give the book a read is that Chris Hayes has been a frequent guest on the Rachel Maddow show, and he’s always interesting there. I know he’s also got his own MSNBC show now, though I’ve never seen it since he doesn’t do a podcast of it and I’m too lazy to invest a lot of time in watching clips on the website. But that meant when he had a book coming out, I decided to grab it and see what he had to say.

Actually, what I picked up was the audiobook, which is unabridged and read by Chris Hayes himself. I have no regrets about this.

The man thrust of the book is that meritocracy, which is lionized as an idea in America, just doesn’t work. The concept sounds nice – who doesn’t like the idea of people who have more ability rising to the top and being in charge – but in practice rapidly devolves into an oligarchy. Most of the book is devoted to developing the argument and providing examples.

One major point is that we are obsessed with equality of opportunity, and assume that if there is equality of opportunity – bootstraps for everyone! – then equality of outcome will follow. But since there’s no even minimal equality of outcome (eg: people are destitute) then equality of opportunity is quickly lost.

This is definitely a point I can buy. After hearing about and seeing what happens to kids in low income schools, I feel comfortable that whoever claims we have equality of opportunity today are kidding themselves.

Another point Hayes makes very well is the problem of social distance. As opportunities and outcomes become more unequal, the social distance between those making the decisions and those affected most by them increases to the point of complete divorce. The douchebags that crashed the economy for the most part didn’t get their lives ruined the way poor schmoes who have been on unemployment for endless months have. Most everyone in congress is a millionaire, while the people they supposedly represent are not. Very few veterans are in congress these days – and we haven’t had a veteran as a president for quite some time – but they’re the ones that decide to send people who have no real connection to their lives to war.

Which, as an aside, is a point Rachel Maddow goes over in her book Drift, which I also recommend. (I have the audiobook of that one too, and it’s really good, read by Rachel.)

What makes the book depressing – you know, aside from the unending litany of American social failure – is Hayes’ proposed solution. He thinks it lies in the upper middle class, who have been radicalized. Maybe I’m just not hanging out with the right people, but I’m really not seeing it. By and large, middle class, let alone upper middle class, American still seem to be under the mistaken impression that the wealth gap isn’t as awful as it really is. How many people freaked the hell out about letting the Bush tax cuts expire for the wealthiest because they had the utterly crazy impression it would somehow affect them? Also, considering that part of Hayes’ solution seems to be convincing the elite that they really need to let other people drive the boat on occasion… yeah, I don’t think I can be that optimistic about that.

But trust me, I’d love to be proved wrong.

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movie review shakespeare tom hiddleston

The Hollow Crown 2: Henry IV Part 1

Henry IV part 1 today. Hilariously enough it was delayed by an hour because of Wimbledon. A tennis delay seems like something that would be so much more appropriate to Henry V…

…not that I’m in any way asking for a tennis delay by the time we get to that play. I might implode.

I don’t need to start here with a litany of complaints about the play like I did with Richard II. I loved both parts of Henry IV when I read them – and as with Shakespeare, I expected to like them even better with a proper performance. (Because let’s face it… these works were meant to be viewed, not just read like normal books. Quit torturing those kids in high school.)

Casting was perfect, just as it was for Richard II. Jeremy Irons as Henry IV! Incredible. (Does Jeremy Irons ever get to be king when he hasn’t deposed the rightful monarch first? Just asking.) The man can brood like a champion, and Henry does that a lot in this and the next play – because let’s be honest, he has a lot to brood over! His son is a smarmy, shameful party boy, he’s still torturing himself with guilt over what happened to Richard (as necessary as it was) and he’s dealing with open rebellion that’s only going to cost more lives. Jeremy Irons does a fantastic job of depicting the utter weight that constantly sits on Henry without making him morose.

The best of Irons (and it was all good, so the best was incredible) was when he was playing more as the father rather than the king. He radiates disappointment and despair that he’s ended up with a  poor excuse for a son like Hal instead of Hotspur, who really is depicted as the paragon of all noble qualities – it’s hard not to like him. (And Joe Armstrong does indeed make him both likable and still hotheaded.)

Of course, Irons wouldn’t be in such a good position to be a despairing father if Tom Hiddleston didn’t do such an incredible job playing Hal as an awful little prick. I utterly adore Tom Hiddleston, but by the time Henry actually slaps Hal across the face, I was about ready to cheer for it. Never has a slap been so richly deserved, and it was preceded by a wonderfully insolent look to boot. The beginning of Hal’s evolution from a waste of space to a great king gets a good start, and I can’t wait to see it continue in the next part.

Which then brings us to Simon Russell Beale as Falstaff, because what would Hal without an utterly awful (yet jolly and hilarious) human being to egg him on? Best Falstaff ever, in my opinion. His self-serving interest in Hal is made so clear, though I think there’s genuine affection there as well. The scene between Hal and Falstaff where they take turns pretending to be Henry IV was simultaneously hilarious and uncomfortable; incredibly well done.

Also, Tom Hiddleston’s Jeremy Irons impression made me snort beer through my nose. Damn you, Hiddleston.

A special shout out to the gentleman who played the Sheriff. I wish I knew his name, but it’s not currently listed on IMDB. When he comes to collect Hal from his den of iniquity, the Sheriff says:

Good night, my noble lord.

And never has the word noble been delivered with such pointed and censorious air quotes. It was lovely.

So the cast? Excellent. I expect to keep repeating this sentiment for the next two plays as well. (If nothing else, one more play with Jeremy Irons and two with Tom Hiddleston? I am a happy girl.)

This had the same quality on costuming and sets as Richard II to my untrained eye, and I have no complaints there. I wasn’t sure how I felt about scene 1 and 2 of Act 1 being intercut originally, but it grew on me. It did make sense to get people clued in to just who Hal was and why he was proving such a thorn in his father’s side.

Some of the other editing/filming decisions, I liked a little less. There were two major monologues that were delivered as voice overs. One was Hal’s Act 1 scene 2 closing speech:

I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyoked humour of your idleness:
Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world…

And the other was Falstaff’s Act 5 scene 1 closing speech:

‘Tis not due yet; I would be loath to pay him before
his day. What need I be so forward with him that
calls not on me? Well, ’tis no matter; honour pricks
me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I
come on? how then? Can honour set to a leg? no: or
an arm? no…

Both of these are incredibly important and I’m puzzled why they were delivered that way, particularly since it was basically just a voice over while the character in question just sort of… walked around and took in the scenery. There might have been a little showing in their expressions, but not nearly as much as we would have seen if they’d actually spoken the lines and played them out. It’s not as if there aren’t other times where someone talks to themselves for the benefit of the camera – Falstaff’s dastardly scheme to pretend that he killed Hotspur was spoken aloud. So I’m not sure why that was done, and I felt like it really detracted from the play.

I have very mixed feelings about the battle and the way it was filmed. There was shaky cam in it, which I am beyond tired of but I guess it’ll never go away so I’ll just be a useless curmudgeon about it. But I think during the main part of the battle there was some kind of change on the camera filter… so during the action all of the colors were incredibly muted. This made it harder to tell who might be who – maybe that was the point – but as soon as Hal and Hotspur split off to have their confrontation the colors came back to normal and it just seemed very jarring. I was not a fan of that. There were also people complaining on Twitter that they didn’t feel there were enough people involved in the battle – I didn’t feel like it was too sparse, myself. I just wish I could have seen better what was going on!

These are really the only two complaints I can come up with for the production. I enjoyed it greatly, more than I did Richard II. I’m looking forward to them coming to the US so I can get DVDs. (Though I fear Tom Hiddleston will likely still have to take turns with Kenneth Branagh for Henry V duty. Sorry, Tom. A girl doesn’t forget her first love.)

I’m just incredibly sad I won’t get to watch part 2 on streaming next weekend. I’ll be in Pennsylvania for a field trip, so I expect I’ll be in a quarry, getting eaten alive by bugs when I’d much rather be watching Irons and Hiddleston rule the internet. Hopefully I can sneak a peak at it later.

[I’ve now seen Part 2, and it was good. So very good.]

The Hollow Crown blogging:
Richard II
Henry IV part 1
Henry IV part 2
Henry V

Categories
movie review

An open letter to Prometheus

Yo, here be spoilers.


Dear Prometheus:

I wanted to love you, I really did. From the moment I first saw the trailer I thought this was going to be one of the movies I was born to love. Horseshoe ship! Space jockey! Michael Fassbender! Flamethrowers!

And it’s not like I generally have standards that high, right? I mean, you did see my review of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, didn’t you?

Though I did go in with higher expectations than that, and maybe that was the problem. I liked Alien and I loved Aliens and we’re just not going to talk about those other movies okay? I was willing to forget the horrors of the past because this was Ridley Scott coming home to his baby.

Because this is the problem. Alien was a horror movie with a scifi background. Aliens was an action movie with a scifi background. But you, Prometheus, you were touted to be an honest-to-goodness real science fiction move, which means that as a lover of science fiction I had no choice but to expect more of you.

This was the thing about Alien and Aliens. While there was the occasional whoops moment in those  movies, the characters that populated them weren’t dumb. They were just generally up against an implacable, terrifying enemy that out-everythinged pitiful humans who never had all the facts about what they were facing until it was too late. That was what made those movies good. You were rooting for the humans to triumph because damnit, they were trying so hard.

Why couldn’t you be more like your mom and dad, Prometheus? But no, instead you were populated with a collection of scientists so dumb I feel like there must have been a writing process where, in draft after draft, the script was read and someone said, “Well yes, but they’re still too smart. Try adding some drool.” Where did you dig up the geologist and biologist? Mail order from Planet Ohmyfuckinggodwhateven? Did their graduate degrees include, as a door prize, a full lobotomy given by a janitor with extremely shaky hands? A geologist bitching that there are no rocks when he’s on a planet with no vegetative cover? And what’s this shit about him just being in it for the money? And the biologist, what was that even? Calling evolution Darwinism and playing coochie-coo with an alien cobra that has a terrifying vagina instead of a face?

I figured we were in real trouble when the scientists repeatedly couldn’t remember the difference between a theory and a hypothesis. Between that and the Darwinism thing, I’m throwing some serious side-eyeing at this script writer. Let’s just say I could keep ranting about the unnecessarily stupid science gaffes that could have been corrected and would only have served to strengthen the story. But at this point all I can hear in my head, repeating over and over is, “A super nova that was going to destroy the galaxy let’s fix it with red matter! Yeah!”

And Charlie. Don’t even get me started on Charlie. As far as I can tell his entire contribution to the movie was getting shit-faced and then sexing up Dr. Shaw so she could have an evil alien squid baby in one of the better (and more disturbing) scenes of the movie.

Oh yeah. And he got set on fire. That was pretty boss. Actually, I liked that scene quite a bit, and not just because it meant we no longer had to suffer through Charlie’s weird pouting about gee we only just made the single most important discovery EVER IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND but it’s somehow not good enough because all the aliens are mysteriously dead. No, that scene was awesome because of Meredith Vickers wielding a flame thrower and setting Charlie on fire. And in that moment when he’s dropped on the ground and screaming there’s an amazing shot of her face where you realize even she can’t believe she just did that. (So good on you, Charlize Theron. But we already knew you were awesome.)

But I digress.

Also, there’s the matter of the aliens. I knew going in that we weren’t getting xenomorphs, and that was fine. Because we were going to get the space jockey and hell yeah. But instead we get giant white guys with bulging muscles. I get the punchline that apparently we were created in their image (somehow, only we got their DNA and evolution happened and… oh hell with this) but they just want to kill us all now for some nebulous reason. It was all very unsatisfying. Xenomorphs, I could buy. They want to fucking eat us, or lay eggs in us, and it makes sense. But frankly, the engineers felt like a giant navel-gazing cop-out where confusion was substituted willy-nilly for deep.

Though to be honest, I still prefer the giant white dudes to the squid baby and it’s horrifying vagina dentata. At the end the engineer + squid = xenomorph-ish was a math problem far too disgusting for me to even want to see the proof.

You were trying to ask big questions. I felt it. It was obvious you were trying to take something from the mashup of science and religion and the question of who created us – and hey if it was aliens, who created them. But then instead of going anywhere with that, having any real development it was just the same lines over and over again. Well why do you believe X? Because I choose to. Perhaps this is a problem of mine because I’m an atheist, but I feel like that’s a giant cop-out, particularly when it’s just sort of dropped on the floor and left there to pathetically roll around like a turtle attempting to right itself. Really all it tells me is that Dr. Shaw is really stubborn, since that’s basically her answer in both the beginning and end of the movie despite all events that occurred.

Really at this point all I can do is cross my arms, sadly shake my head, and say I expected so much more of you.

Oh no, please stop crying. It’s not all bad. I’m not demanding my money back. I’m not comparing you to, say, The Last Airbender, where I left the theater and then immediately fell to my knees to scream “WHY?” at the uncaring sky. There were things I liked.

Charlize Theron, for example. Idris Elba playing a concertina was something that will keep me warm and smiling on a sad, cold night or two. (Though him keeping Charlize Theron warm for no apparent reason was just another bit of in-theater facepalm for me.) Noomi Rapace as Dr. Shaw managed to operate like she had half a brain more often than any of the other sacrificial lambs (this is not saying much) and she does have a few excellent moments, so that’s something. And you are visually lovely.

But I’ve also got to be honest. The only character I really gave a shit about was David, because he was interesting. He had a plan, and even if it ended badly for him, you could see everything he did was in service of that plan and not just because the script needed him to do something utterly moronic. I was also quite captivated by the way he was played, because to me it seemed like every time people tried to reassure themselves that he had no emotions (being a robot and all) it was rather plain that he did have feelings. There seemed like a lot of sarcasm in his agreement with people whenever they pointed out something in his robot nature – and some genuine pain when Weyland calls him the closest thing he’ll have to a son followed immediately by pointing out that he doesn’t have a soul. (Weyland, you turd. Don’t mess with my boy.) David’s obviously got some very rich internal life going on, and I think that was why I was much more willing to buy the sillier bits of him being the macguffin and instantly knowing how to operate the alien machines and speak giant white dude-ese.

I was willing to forgive David because when he wasn’t being the plot’s bitch, there was something there to find interesting. You paying attention, other characters?

To be honest, Prometheus, I think I’d rather just rename you The Unfortunate Adventure of David and Some Jaw-Droppingly Stupid People.

Sorry, but even then I still wouldn’t buy the DVD.

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movie review

Brave

There are many things I manifestly Do Not Get about the reactions people seem to be having to Brave. I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about it not being up to the standards of other Pixar movies. Or it’s just too much of a girl movie. Or something. What? Did we even see the same movie?

The only thing that keeps Brave from being my favorite Pixar movie ever is the existence of The Incredibles. (It’s a solid tie, in that case, with Wall-E and Up.) I liked it as much if not more than I liked any Toy Story, and I feel far more attached to Brave as a story than I do to Finding Nemo or Monsters, Inc. (Confession: Still haven’t seen Cars. Just can’t seem to care.)

I suppose you could call Brave a girl movie in as much as the main character is a girl, but that’s about it. You know what, boys? Girls constantly are forced to identify with male main characters in stories. You can give going on the journey with someone that isn’t your gender a whirl. It doesn’t hurt, I swear. And while the main conflict of Brave is something that happens between mother and daughter – and in a situation that could be considered more female eg: being forced into a betrothal – focusing on the gender of the people at conflict is frankly unnecessary. It’s about a teenager who wants to be control of hir own life struggling with the authoritarian parent, the two of them butting heads, and ultimately redefining their relationship in a way where they both better understand each other.

There is nothing uniquely female about that, other than the bit about enforcing gender roles, which I almost think is beside the point. Boys know just as much as girls what it’s like to struggle against what feels like the unfairness of parental edicts. And it’s revealed within the movie that while Merida is the most vocal about not liking the tradition – and the most combative against it – the young men that are supposed to be trying to win her like a prize aren’t necessarily in full agreement with the arrangement either.

Okay at this point, if you want to avoid spoilers you should probably just stop reading and go see the movie first. It’s a good movie. You should see it anyway.

Really, one of the things I liked most about this movie is that it avoided the typical Disney Princess Shit. Merida struggles to define her own destiny by not having to follow tradition and get married. In what I would think of as a typical Disney storyline, she would have ended up deciding one of the boys wasn’t so bad after all, or falling for a complete out of left field candidate, and still ended up in a saccharine happily ever after relationship. Brave doesn’t do this. At the end of the movie, the suitors sail away, and Merida hasn’t made any kind of choice. In fact, her sexuality hasn’t been defined at all – something my friend David pointed out that he really liked, and I do as well. Maybe Merida is lesbian and that’s why she didn’t want to get married. Maybe she’s heterosexual and just not ready. Maybe she’s asexual. We don’t ever find out and it doesn’t matter because it’s beside the point of the movie.

The movie isn’t about who Merida will choose. It’s about Merida fighting for the ability to decide for herself with none of the above as an available option. And I think that’s a very powerful thing, and something that should be a message people of any gender or sexuality could identify with. In this movie Merida wins the right to not be defined by a relationship and to be herself.

So no. I don’t think this is a “girl” movie. And I would also like to note that I find that implication insulting, as if somehow something being a “girl” thing makes it inherently inferior. As if “boy” movies have broad appeal and “girl” movies are only for a lesser audience. Fuck you, marketing people.

But I digress.

This movie is also manifestly not some sort of ‘parents know best’ trope. Ultimately, Elinor comes to see things from Merida’s viewpoint and even urges Merida to make a speech about bucking tradition in front of the men. What I see Merida learning is that her mother still loves her even when they disagree viciously – she learns that her mother is fallible, and human, and not simply an obstacle she needs to tear her way through.

One of the major plot points for the movie is when Merida and her mother have a really nasty argument about Merida bucking tradition. I think that’s another point that anyone should be able to identify with. Anyone who has ever been a teenager has probably had that fight with one of their parents, and remembers it with an internal cringe. You know, the fight where you both get so angry you say incredibly stupid, mean things to each other, where things both physical and emotional get broken and you aren’t certain if they’ll ever be fixed.

And it’s that argument that’s the catalyst for the rest of the movie, because it leads Merida to the witch, where she asks for a spell that will change her mother. Not, as the trailer would have you believe, a spell that will specifically change her fate – because she believes changing her mother will change her fate somehow, since her mother’s become the stand-in for all of the tradition she wants to buck.

I think the trailer for Brave did the movie a real disservice. Maybe they were afraid of revealing too much about the movie. But basically what you get from the trailer is that Merida is rebellious! Merida argues with mom! Merida wants to change her fate! Whatever that means.

What Merida actually does is change her mom into a bear. And she then has only two days to try to fix the situation, which involves mending their relationship and admitting that she’s the one responsible for this particular screw-up. (Along with a whole other plot line about the scary demon bear that ate her dad’s leg, but I feel like that’s more a vehicle for Merida’s mom to get to be incredibly awesome.) Honestly, I think people would have been a hell of a lot more eager to see Brave if Pixar had even just let it out in the American trailer that Elinor gets turned into a bear. I’m mystified why they didn’t; it’s in a lot of the international trailers, so I actually knew it was going to happen before I saw it.

Honestly, I also think putting that aspect of the movie into the trailer – Elinor is turned into a bear and Merida has to reverse the spell! Danger! – would make it a lot harder for people to dismiss Brave offhand as just some girl movie about mothers and daughters and the tricky relationships between the two.

But I’m not a marketing person, I guess, what do I know.

Actually, I think I’m done with spoilers now if you want to read this next bit.

So yes, the plot interesting, and a lot of ink (or pixels) can be spilled examining different aspects of it, I think.

But more to the point, it’s just a good movie. It’s fun, the plot has suspense, the characters are lovable. The same set of people who have been complaining about Brave being a girl movie have complained that the male characters are just caricatures, and I’m again forced to wonder if we saw the same movie. While a lot of the supporting characters are pretty two dimensional, both male and female, the main male character is Merida’s dad, Fergus, and I think he’s lovely. He’s a guy who loves his family, respects his wife, and just wants to have a good time and keep everyone safe from the evil bear.

The characters definitely get a thumbs-up from me. I’m particularly amused that one of the clan heads is named MacGuffin.

Pixar outdid itself on the visuals for the movie. The scenery is fantastic. Merida’s hair is indescribably amazing. The music was done by Patrick Doyle, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard a soundtrack from him I didn’t like.

Honestly, thinking about it, there’s not really one bad thing I can think to say about the movie. I wish I could take my niece to see it, but it’d still be a little too scary for her. It’s good. It made me laugh out loud and sniffle and gave me surprisingly complicated things I could think about after. Just what I expect from Pixar.

Categories
movie review shakespeare

The Hollow Crown 1: Richard II

I have been in a state of nerd DEFCON 2 all year, I swear. 2012 is starting to feel like the apology for the (other than Thor) rather thin offerings of things that to watch in 2011. But I haven’t just been vibrating with barely controlled glee over the various extravaganzas of shit blowing up and bad things getting punched in the throat (slow motion optional). I’ve been counting the days until the start of the BBC’s The Hollow Crown, which is their presentation of four of Shakespeare’s history plays: Richard II, Henry IV part 1 and part 2, and Henry V. The name “The Hollow Crown” actually comes from a line in Richard II (act 3 scene 2):

For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison’d by their wives: some sleeping kill’d;
All murder’d: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits…
Nice pick for three plays about the life and death of kings.

I love Shakespeare. I have since my mother had me watch Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing. I regularly go for plays in Boulder’s summer Shakespeare festival, though unfortunately none for me this year since I’m in Houston. But hey, the BBC is helping me out with this one.

I actually took Shakespeare for non-majors to get my upper division literature credit for my BA. We ended up reading Richard II and both parts of Henry IV, though to my eternal sadness didn’t continue on to Henry V, which is still my favorite out of all the plays. That class is also the source of one of the worst sentences I’ve ever written in my life (in a paper about Macbeth) but I digress. We did get to watch a video of the production of Richard II that Derek Jacobi starred in, and I liked it well enough.

Full disclosure: I probably would have just been at nerd DEFCON 3, if it weren’t for the fact that Tom Hiddleston is playing Prince Hal/Henry V in the next plays. Favorite actor in favorite play ever? Gosh BBC, I would have just been happy with a box of chocolates and a stilted love letter, you didn’t have to go to all this trouble, but THANKS.

I will admit that of the four plays listed, Richard II is probably my least favorite. I’m not really wowed by the fact that it’s written in full verse, since I feel like the rhyming gets a little tedious or strained at times. I feel like it’s got some structural weaknesses in the plot – for example, I’ve been trying for years to actually give a crap one way or the other when Richard’s sycophants get put to death, but it’s pretty hard to do so when they don’t actually do anything as far as we can tell. We only hear about their misdeeds as a quick litany right before the head chopping happens. (I’m thinking this might have been less of an issue for audiences who were historically closer to the events being described, and also likely less picky.)

There’s also the fact that it ends up feeling very uneven; Richard is basically deposed at the end of Act 3, and it takes two more acts (which feel a bit drawn out) of him emoting before the thing is really done. I watched the #TheHollowCrown twitter tag the entire time the play was going, and saw quite a few people who were unacquainted with the play feeling very confused that Richard was deposed with something like another 40 minutes to go, because that really does feel like the end right there. A lot of action happens offstage that makes it much less satisfying than what we get out of Henry IV and Henry V. And so on.

Which is not to say that I dislike the play. Obviously, I was still utterly geeked to sit down and watch it via streaming. I’m just setting what I feel are flaws of the play out because I went in expecting those flaws to be in evidence. They’re structural to the play and can’t really be escaped.

So with that in mind, I thought the production was excellent, and I enjoyed it even more than I expected to.

Costumes and sets were just fine for my untrained eye; to me it looked better than a lot of BBC shows I’ve seen in the past thanks to the magic of PBS.

Really what blew me away was the casting. There wasn’t a single actor in there that I’d even begin to complain about. There were actually several non-white actors cast, which I thought was excellent. Lucian Msamati was the Bishop of Carlisle, and I thought he did great. Someone actually complained on twitter about it, which gave me some serious rageface1.

Ben Whishaw did an absolutely amazing job as Richard, handling all of his lightning fast swings between manic hope and rage and utter despair deftly. On one hand he made me want to punch Richard in the throat for being such a self-absorbed, petty tyrant, and on the other he still managed to make Richard a sympathetic character at the end, because you really could feel his complete loss of all hope. There was some commentary on twitter that he was getting a rather effeminate treatment; maybe a little, but that seems pretty in keeping with the play, I think, particularly since it makes Henry look like more of a badass.

David Suchet made an amazing Duke of York. I loved him to pieces in every scene he was in. He had all the internal conflict of choosing between Richard (the rightful but total crap king) and Henry (the usurper but much better king) and it came through very powerfully.

And of course, Patrick Stewart as John of Gaunt just stole it completely. Which I guess is what you’d expect from Patrick Stewart. John of Gaunt’s big speech in Act 2 scene 1 just gave me chills.

The only thing for the production I really didn’t care for was I felt like the divine imagery got hammered on a little too much. Yes, I get it. Richard being deposed was a massive blow against the idea of the divine right of kings. And he certainly felt himself persecuted. But somewhere between him laying out on the floor of the throne room in his white robe and being tucked in a coffin with some very well-placed wounds, it got to be just a bit too much for my taste. At the point the coffin was open and we got a full view of mostly naked Richard with his knees bent in a rather familiar pose, I turned to Mike and said, “He just went the full Jesus. Never go the full Jesus.” So obviously, this did not have the desired effect on me as a viewer if my reaction was sarcastic paraphrasing of Kirk Lazarus.

Anyway, if you like Shakespeare, definitely give this one a whirl. If you want to try Shakespeare out, it’s not a bad place to start, though the verse can be a little rough if you’re not used to it. The actors are all excellent, though, so you can get a good idea of what’s going on even if you have a hard time following some of the dialog – though I’d recommend perhaps reading a summary of the play first just in case since that does help.

What this has really done is given me a massive case of anticipatory squee for the next three installments. If they managed to impress me this much with a play I’m pretty lukewarm toward, I may just explode in a shower of sugary sparkles of happiness by the time we get to the Battle of Agincourt in Henry V.

1 – Obviously in his day, everything was about white dudes, and all the actors were white dudes, because duh. I’m really happy that non-white actors are finally scoring parts, and within the context of the plays it’s being treated as a complete non-issue. I just keep wondering when women are finally going to get that chance in mainstream productions. There are obviously some places where that wouldn’t work, but for example in Richard II it doesn’t make a whole hell of a lot of a difference if Bagot is played by a man or a woman. This is just a thing I think about on occasion, because if this were fantasy mirror world where I could actually magically be an actress, I would still never get to play any of the parts Shakespeare wrote that I love best, because back in his day women didn’t get to do a whole hell of a lot. (Including acting, so hey at least we’ve gotten that far!) So it just makes me sad. Not that it stops me from reading scenes to my cats when no one is around and I feel like making dramatic pronouncements.

The Hollow Crown blogging:
Richard II
Henry IV part 1
Henry IV part 2
Henry V

Categories
awesome movie review

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Try, for a moment, to imagine the most ridiculously awesome thing possible. Imagine a unicorn composed of woven rainbows and cotton candy with hooves of chiming silver bells and a goofy, horsey smile. Imagine this unicorn galloping across a sky made of pie and pudding and baby giggles while Eric Prydz’s Call On Me remix plays in an endless disco loop in the background. And on this unicorn’s back are Lady Gaga and Tom Hiddleston, wearing matching meat dresses, holding hands and singing along while fireworks and magical sparkles burst into being and simultaneously Chuck Norris roundhouse kicks a velociraptor in the face over and over again for all eternity.

Got that all?

Okay. Now imagine something even more awesome.

You can’t.

That’s because you haven’t seen Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter yet. You lack the necessary vocabulary for the sort of awesome we’re talking about here.

Let me put it to you straight. This is not a good movie. God no. The pacing gets weird, some of the characters can’t seem to figure out who exactly they are from one scene to another, and to call some of the dialog cringe-inducing would be a kindness. And it doesn’t actually matter.

Because let’s be honest. You aren’t watching this movie because you want to watch something good. You’re watching it because you want to see Abraham Motherfucking Lincoln kill a shitload of vampires. With an ax. Which he twirls around like he’s in the color guard contingent recruited directly from Hell. You’re watching this moving because it’s shit-eating-grin cracked-out fun.

Which is exactly what it is. Anyone who tries to take this movie seriously (or thinks this movie is in any way taking itself seriously) is missing the point entirely. It’s not supposed to be serious, or good, or compelling. It’s supposed to be a thing that makes you giggle so hard with pure, child-like glee that you think you’re going to strain a muscle in your face.

I paid $10.50 to see this movie and I feel like I got every penny of enjoyment I was owed and more, from the first ridiculous moment of bitty Abraham Lincoln running at a bad guy with a hatchet to the first part of the credits where they make a map of the US out of flowing cgi blood.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is one of those rare movies where what you saw in the trailer is exactly what you get out of the movie. So if you watched the trailer and thought “Hell yeah I want to eat some fucking popcorn and watch vampires with bad southern accents get chopped apart in random moments of super slow motion” then go to your theater, throw money at them, and get on your goddamn magic unicorn.

If me stating: Dude. It’s a hatchet. With a gun in it. It’s a fucking HATCHETGUN, doesn’t make you want to instantly reach through the internet and engage in a serious brofist, this is not the movie for you.

Trust me.

Honest as Abe.

Categories
movie NERD review tom hiddleston

Thor Loki Makes Me Go Squee

I liked the hell out of Thor; it’s a fun movie, and I hope I’ll get to see it again while it’s still in theaters. Watch out, mateys, THAR BE SPOILERS AHEAD!

SPOILERS

I liked Thor as a character well enough, and I appreciated that his major arc was realizing that he was kind of a dick and getting over himself. But it actually surprised me a lot that my favorite character out of that movie was Loki. I’m used to feeling fairly meh about comic book villains, but Loki felt like he had a lot of complexity to him.

And I swear, it’s not just because I’ve got a cat named Loki too.

Tom Hiddleston does an amazing job with the character. Loki’s constantly broody and thinky and plotty, and is obviously the smartest guy around, but at the same time just gets screwed again and again by his own issues. I’ve now read a couple of interviews with Mr. Hiddleston where he says Loki just really needs a lot of prozac and a lot of therapy. I’d definitely add a lot of hugs in there too, because damn I ended up feeling really bad for the guy for most of the movie. Yes, a lot of the bad stuff is his own fault for being all plotty and wanting to cause trouble, but the whole bit where he finds out he’s actually just a runty frost giant that Odin adopted… yeah, man needed a hug right then. It’s really not the sort of thing that you want to discover on your own.

I really see his major head-explodey moment there as the reason Loki just goes off the rails and crosses from being a crafty trouble-maker to an actual bad guy. I’ve read a bit of summary from the comics now, but the way it was really presented in the movie was:

a) Odin really does seem earnest that he loves both Thor and Loki equally.

b) Loki seems just as genuinely convinced that Odin can’t possibly love him that much. And there’s a certain logic too it even if you just look at the movie and nothing else… considering how everyone in Asgard seems to feel about the frost giants, it’s probably hard to imagine daddy genuinely loving you at all if you’re actually one of them.

c) Thor is the default good son, even though he starts off as kind of a douchebag.

d) And Loki is actually right when he points out that Douchebag!Thor would be a horrible king that Asgard needed “saving” from. Though at that point, you can’t quite be sure if he says that because he really means it, because he’s trying to convince himself that he’s got a noble reason for doing what he’s doing, or if he’s once again just really trying to fuck with people.

So of course it’s all wonderfully angsty, and that rolls into a lot of anger and that weird sort of love/hate that only siblings can manage to have for each other in these sorts of stories. The final epic fight that Loki has with Thor was definitely Loki trying to prove something to someone, but there are just so many ways that it could be read. If nothing else, I really wonder about Loki deciding to destroy the frost giants, as if that sort of over the top gesture would somehow make him not one of them by showing that damnit, he hated frost giants more than any other Asgardian possibly could.

Now, from the comic summaries I’ve read, it sounds like Thor really was the golden boy that daddy loved best, and that even if no one necessarily knew what Loki was, he also lacked the sheer physical presence in the form of enormous muscles that residents of Asgard seem to prize. But to be honest, I actually prefer the movie take from the standpoint of character complexity; it’s more interesting if dad really does love his sons equally, I think.

I am definitely, definitely, DEFINITELY looking forward to seeing Loki in the Avengers movie. If nothing else, I cannot wait to see what Joss Whedon does with him in the script, since Joss is the absolute king of the the complex and interesting evil-but-not-really-just-needs-a-hug villain. And from the little stinger that comes after the credits on Thor, Loki seems set to be prominent in the next film. Though considering that Thor also left the title character stranded in Asgard, I’ll be interested to see how the Avengers actually all manage to get together to begin with.

/SPOILERS

Wonderful stuff. Makes me wish I still wrote fanfic, to be honest.

Off the topic of my new fan obsession, Heimdall was amazing as well. Even without taking in to account that casting Idris Elba pissed off the white supremacists to no end (WIN!) he did a really good performance as an immensely intimidating and exceptionally patient god. I loved it.