Vaya Con Mandoline!

Rating: B
After being given the opportunity to pick a product from the wonderful people over at CSN Stores to review I began to browse around to see what I would like and something that I think would also be great to own. It took a while to find what I thought would be suitable for the price range that I was given and something that I thought would be worth reviewing considering their myriad of items to choose from. I finally ended up settling on the OXO Hand Held Mandoline. When I first saw the word “mandoline”, I thought that it meant the musical instrument so I was very confused, but now I feel like my vocabulary has expanded, so thanks for that. Anyway, I saw this and thought that it would be a good item to write a review on, the only problem was that it was a bit pricey. I was given a $20 gift certificate to use in order to pick an item and when I got the total with shipping and handling it came out to be slightly over, but I thought about the price again and said to myself that if it costs this much then it has to be a pretty good product, so I took the dive.

I have to tell you that I’m glad that I did. When I received the product in the mail, I opened it and gave it a good looking over. I don’t know exactly what all of the materials that the mandoline is made of, but from what I could tell, I saw a plastic body, a rubber grip, and a stainless steel blade. Now, I’m not an expert when it comes to kitchen utensils but I thought that it was pretty cool that it had three different settings with the thinnest setting serving as a safety from the blade when cleaning the product, which ended up being pretty straight forward. I was afraid that there would be bits and pieces of the potatoes that my fiancé sliced to make homemade potato chips stuck in the corners, but that was not the case at all. The slicer is made to where the handle and body come together to form an arc, this also provided a great way to test durability. I pressed down fairly hard to see if it could withstand a great amount of pressure and it held up very well. The slicer also has a lip so that it is easy to hold over a bowl and let the slices of whatever you want fall right in. I found this concept to have good intentions but extremely cumbrous making it difficult to accomplish.

I also found that the stainless steel blade works extremely well and allows most food items to slide right through, with the exception of a block of cheese that was, for some reason, impossible to slice. The mandoline also comes with a separate grip that makes it safe and easy to slice objects when almost all of it is gone. All in all, I think this is a great product that I will continue to use well into the future for whatever I see fit, except cheese. I plan on trying to slice a block of cheese again because I have a sneaking suspicion that I may have possibly been doing it wrong, give me a break, I’m a man. I would recommend this product to others but only if they are willing to shell out a little cash because I do think that it is a bit on the expensive side.

Invesigating Batman, Inc.

Rating: A
So today was the release date for the first issue of Batman, Inc. the comic about The Batman starting franchises of Batmen around the world. Written by Grant Morrison and drawn by Yanick Paquette, this issue focuses on The Batman traveling to Japan to recruit a hero who draws on the same basic morals as the caped-crusader. I should also mention that The Batman is being accompanied by Catwoman because of his need to recover a mysterious jewel from Doctor Sivana’s secret project called “Project X” which Catwoman appropriately makes fun of while The Batman takes care of a few pesky robot animals that are guarding it.

The very beginning of this issue shows the original Mr. Unknown, who The Batman intends on making the Batman of Japan, being killed by the worst titled of all Batman villains, Lord Death Man. The first few frames of this issue show some very gruesome things happening to Mr. Unknown, including his hands being eaten away by corrosive acid. So what is The Batman to do? His first employee is dead and there’s a murderer on the loose. Luckily, Mr. Unknown has a sidekick who serves as his body double and shares his moral code. I won’t explain any further because I don’t like to give away intricate parts of a story, but rest assured that there are plenty of very much unexpected surprises for a first issue of a series.

I have been awaiting this series since it was first announced earlier this year because it is, to a great extent, a spin-off of Christopher Nolan’s film The Dark Knight. This is very important in the tales of The Batman because it shows that there are others in the world who share the same moralistic ideals of Bruce Wayne’s alter ego. It is very dangerous to have a masked vigilante running around with access to high tech gadgetry, but if you take into account The Batman’s moral views on killing people then the game changes entirely. The only problem is that the authorities don’t like it at all because of how The Batman works outside of the law to get things done, making the whole idea of universalized Batman very dangerous to the general consensus of authority.

I have to say that I really like Grant Morrison as a writer; he’s able to use classic comic book style language while still recognizing how cliché it is to use names like “Project X”. I also really enjoyed the art style of Paquette. It’s not cartoonish but it also isn’t too realistic keeping with the idea that this is a fictional work enabling the clichés of Morrison to work throughout the story. This is also very good because of the incorporation of the highly sexualized character of Catwoman, considering the scene where there is some obvious sexual tension between Bruce and Selina. Because of this scene and some other violent images that I will not mention due to story details, this comic is not for those who are too young meaning that it is intended for more mature audiences. This fact, however redundant I make it appear to be, has a very important meaning behind, which is that Morrison and Paquette are creating something for adults that enables them to engage in their child-like imagination and make them truly interact with the comic.

For all of these reasons, I truly think that Batman, Inc. is going to be a great and important arc in the history of The Batman. For those of you who have been wondering why I’ve been calling him “The Batman”, it’s because that’s how he was introduced in Detective Comics #27, so I think Bob Kane would want it that way. And some of you thought that comics were for kids. Shame on you! I have spoken.

A Product Review? A Product Review!

I’m going to be trying something new pretty soon thanks to the guys and gals over at CSN Stores. Now, I’ve looked through some of their websites, only some because I think it would take quite a while to go through more than 200 of them that are offered to peruse. After going through them I learned that they offer a very wide variety of items; including couches, accessories, and even bathroom shelving! Now, I’ve seen some companies websites offer a wide range of items, but bathroom shelving?! I’ve never seen anyone offer that wide of a variety.

So you may be asking why I’m talking so much about these sites and what they offer. Well these nice folks have contacted me after seeing just how awesome I am (You believe I’m awesome too, right? Well, you should.) and have offered me a chance to review one of their many products with a $20 gift certificate. Now, I’m not sure what I’ll be reviewing just yet because, frankly, there’s a ton of stuff to choose from and I want to find just the right item. So keep a look out for an upcoming review of a product from CSN Stores.

So I Went to Dark City...

Rating: B+

            …and I don’t remember a thing. I know that not everyone likes science fiction, but if you like thrillers, mysteries, or even tragic romance, then you should definitely watch this film. Dark City (1998) is a film about a man that wakes up to a blank memory and a murdered woman but as he tries to figure out what happened in that room he gets into some very strange territory. Without disclosing too much information, it turns out that there are some very influential beings called “Strangers” that have the ability to stop time and move around memories between people. What I find extremely cool about this film is that it offers up an amalgam of tons of other science fiction and dark films from history. There are elements of films from the horror films of German Expressionism like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu while maintaining nuances of mystery like M and even engaging in science fiction features like those found in Metropolis and Blade Runner. As a matter of fact, I feel like this film was made with Blade Runner in mind considering how similar the main characters seem to be.

I can’t place my finger on it, exactly but there is something underlying the main character, John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell), which makes him very similar to Rick Deckard from Blade Runner. No matter what it may be that I see in the character, I should tell you that the acting is not too bad, I don’t think that anyone deserves an Oscar mind you but I also don’t think anyone deserves a Razzie. There were a few things that got my attention though, like Sewell’s one giant eye. I don’t know if that was intentional on the part of the director, Alex Proyas, or not because Kiefer Sutherland’s character, Dr. Schreber, also has an eye that seems to be scarred. If this is intentional then this offers some interesting parallels between the characters and I must say that the directing abilities of Proyas in this film are extremely good. He has also directed The Crow and I, Robot with plans to direct Paradise Lost which sounds oddly interesting, doesn’t it? Another bit of acting that got on my nerves after a while was at the hands of Kiefer Sutherland. The way he makes his character speak is as though he has terrible asthma yet we never see him with an inhaler and an asthmatic would definitely need an inhaler in this city.

There are other actors like the great William Hurt and the just as great Richard O’Brien, as well as Jennifer Connelly who plays a jazz singer who in all honesty can’t really sing very well. I’m not as mean as Simon Cowell but I’m glad that Connelly didn’t try a triple-threat career after making this film. Also, something about Connelly that I haven’t really liked in the majority of her films is that she tends to play the same character with a different name. What I mean by this is that she does not seem to have a very wide range. I’m not sure if this is because of being typecast as this particular kind of woman that always appears to be needy of the affections of whoever the main character is. Whatever the reason is for why she continuously plays these roles, I wish she would try to expand her talents because I really feel like she could become a great actress.

Dark City is a great and lavish film that has some obvious influences from amazing films from history. Not only that, but there are great similarities between this film and The Matrix trilogy which would begin only a year later. This is an extremely influential and influenced film within the science fiction genre, making it a necessity for lovers of cinema. I should tell you that you probably will not want to watch the theatrical version of this film because you will not get the same experience as the director’s cut which is the version that Alex Proyas intended. As a matter of fact, your experience will be ruined within the first few minutes. Finally, Proyas seems to give his audience a gift with Dark City by using low-tech techniques which seems to be a lost art with the world of CGI that we live in these days. The director does give some unnecessary shots and a few continuity issues but overall this film is an overwhelming spectacle that should not be missed. I have spoken.

How Many Friends do You Have in The Social Network?

Rating: A+
I personally have about 300,000 billion and a half, but that’s because I’m awesome. Don’t worry, one day you will learn the ways of awesometasticalness, but not now. I’ve got to tell you about this movie I saw the other day so you can figure out whether or not to spend your hard-earned money on it. I can tell you right now that you definitely should.

With the way that ticket prices are going these days, I know that it is becoming ever-so-difficult to choose a film to see that you won’t be disappointed with. Because of this, I can’t help but wonder why someone would choose to go and see horrendously bad movies like The Last Airbender, sorry M. Night, but after Signs you may as well have given up because it seems like that’s what The Village was. I mean seriously, what in the world happened?

Anyway, David Fincher’s The Social Network is one of those movies that when you walk out of the theater you think about what your life is like and wonder whether you’re doing the right thing with it. That’s how you know you’ve witnessed a really good piece of artwork. This tends to be a recurring theme in Fincher’s work, quality I mean. Whether it’s Se7en, Fight Club, or even The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (no matter how unlike the short story it was), David Fincher always expresses the tone of his films extremely well, and oftentimes Fincher does this with colors. In all of the films listed previously as well as the film currently under examination, Fincher uses dark colors because of how dim the subject matter is. These dark colors are extremely appropriate considering just how sad this story is.

If you’ve been living under a rock or this is your first time seeing a film or both then let me give you a little information about the story. Basically, Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) is at Harvard because he’s extremely good with computers and gets in trouble for being better at writing applications and (insert other computer lingo here) and eventually is approached about an idea for a social network site specifically designed for students of the university. He then takes that idea and essentially makes it better turning it into Facebook. The problem, however, is that the group he “stole” this idea from is now suing him for taking their idea global and in the process he loses his best friend. It should be noted that this is not exactly the true story of how Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, but oddly enough the filmmakers chose to use the real names. The story is told in two different timeframes, during the course of being sued and in the process of becoming über famous. These sequences are moved in and out of extremely well making for exquisite editing.

This is going to sound really sinister on my behalf but I really love the idea that a person can lose so many friends while at the same time trying, and succeeding, to gain millions more. When I say that I love the idea, what I mean is that it is innovative, which I believe is what makes this film unique to cinema. It seems like every idea has been done to death and will probably continue to seem that way, but when a film like this comes along, no matter whether it’s well-done or not (which this film is) it shows that there is hope for continued ideas in the world of filmmaking.

So if you’re interested in seeing something that will stimulate your mind and possibly think about that person who used to be your best friend but something you or they did caused that friendship to end, then I suggest this innovative film about the current era of social networking. The Social Network is a great film that discusses how becoming friends with someone has changed to suit the technological age. I have spoken.

Are You in The Union?

Rating: B+
Today I am going to go out on a limb and venture into some new territory of writing reviews. Today’s topic of discussion is going to be a documentary called The Union: The Business Behind Getting High from 2007, directed by Brett Harvey. This documentary traces the history of the illegal marijuana business in British Columbia while also offering information to those who may not be completely educated on what exactly the drug does and why it’s illegal in the first place. Before I go any further I feel I should tell you, yes this includes you mom, that I DO NOT smoke or ingest any drug whatsoever, including marijuana, cigarettes, or alcohol. I like to go into a film with as objective a point of view as possible and that goes double for documentaries.

I have to say that I really liked how persuasive this documentary was in terms of why marijuana should be legalized, which is basically its intent. I think that a quote from the film sums up its purpose; this being, “Legalize it, control it, and tax the livin’ hell out of it.” Now, The Union goes into a lot business talk that, quite honestly, confuses me because I’ve never really understood all of that stuff, which makes me wonder why I like Boiler Room so much… Anyway, what really caught my interest was the massive amount of facts about why marijuana is basically harmless. Aside from the obvious facts like, cigarettes have hundreds of chemicals that go into their production; this film brings up evidence like marijuana cannot do any harm to the body that you would not get from a night of drinking or the harm that comes from breathing in any kind of smoke. Now, I’m not here to convince you to believe the same things that I now believe but I do bring up these facts to show you how persuasive this film really is. There are many other facts that are just as convincing as these are, if not more so, but as I’ve implied, it’s not my job to give you those reasons; I’m here to help you decide whether you should see the film or not, and give reasons why to do so.

I think the best reason why you should watch this film is firstly, to see the new underground railroad (if you’ve seen this, then you know what I’m talking about) and secondly, to get a true understanding of just how far down into the pockets of big business our capitalist system is. Don’t get me wrong, I love my country and yada yada yada, but it is peculiar why cigarettes and alcohol are legal when they are known killers but marijuana, which in reality just makes people lazy, isn’t. I really like how in depth with this particular topic the documentary goes and how hopeful all of the experts in this documentary are about this country actually becoming sensible. I also like how this documentary gives legitimate scientific research and tells the truth about the research used to persuade people like that used in the political agenda of Ronald Reagan.

However, there are some things about this documentary that I didn’t like. I didn’t like how this documentary was given a “host”, I don’t really know if that would be his appropriate title or not but that’s what I’m going with. In some documentaries it would be appropriate to do this, whether it is journalistic or what have you, but this seemed to be more about changing the thinking habits of normal people. When you give a documentary like this a face to remember it with, it tends to make you think, “Oh, this guy is on a mission to find out something, good for him.” (Not necessarily me). When a persuasive argument is faceless it is also all faces and tells you that this is how everyone should see this topic, not just one person. There were some other topics that got on my nerves like the discussion of political administrations and so on, but that’s just a personal issue and has no value in weighing how good of a film this was.

In all, I would highly recommend watching this film to get a better understanding of how the drug works, its place in the American and Canadian cultures, and many other topics. Even if you still don’t agree with the stand that it takes, at least you’ll know why you believe what you believe. I have spoken.

Spartan Swords and Cinema Style

First off, I would like to say that this is NOT a review of 300. This is a general scene analysis of an important, technical part of this film. I know that it is in with my reviews but I felt that it was still appropriate. Now please, read on.

Brutal is the only way to describe Zack Snyder’s 300. It is a movie filled with blood, guts, and cinematic beauty. Coming from a graphic novel, written by Frank Miller, it could be hard to capture the emotions of this movie on a reel of film. But Zack Snyder and his team make that job look very simple.

The fourteenth scene of this movie, according to the DVD recording, shows how an action movie should be filmed, taking different approaches to hits, stabs, screams, war cries, and everything else a good action movie should have. This is the most famous scene from the movie, in which Leonidas and his 300 warriors first fight against the Persian armies of Xerxes. Beginning with Leonidas coming down from the hill where he speaks with Ephialtes, the deformed and outcast wannabe Spartan warrior, and giving a battle order to Artemis, his loyal friend and Captain, this scene lasts approximately five minutes and eight seconds. The end of the scene comes when Leonidas pulls his sword from the body of a dead Persian as the camera tilts up.

The scene, as well as the entire movie, seems to be tinted with different colors. In this particular scene there is a golden hue about everything. When the first wave of Persian soldiers come around a bend on the cliff, where the battle takes place, the sky is shown with the sun casting rich gold onto their battlefield, this adds to the dramatic effect of this particular battle. The next shot pulls back from Leonidas’ helmeted face to reveal his loyal followers behind him with tall spears in the air. Here we see an extreme contrast of the golden tone of their skin and the darkness of the shadows. The horse hair on Leonidas’ helmet is almost unnoticeable because of how dark it is. We can also see this with the capes that the warriors wear. The lighting also affects the capes of the Spartans by toning it to the color of strawberries except where there is a shadow cast from the helmeted heads causing it to appear black. The two colors that mainly appear in this scene are red and gold. Audiences will associate these two colors with royalty and warfare which adds to the epic fight that is taking place between two giants of combat.

One thing that must be remembered about this movie is that it is intentionally over-the-top while still remaining true to the history books. Whether it’s the executioner with blades for arms, the enormous height of the god-king Xerxes, or the earthquake effect of the Persians readying battle formations that occurs at the beginning of this scene; all of these things help to show the devastating power of the Persian empire that only a few Greeks are about to face. To help add to this over-the-top quality, a well constructed musical score is introduced at the time of the Persians wrapping around the bend of the steep cliff which helps the brilliant color of gold play its dramatic role in the picture. With low, resonating bass drums, crashing cymbals, all male chorus, and trumpets doing their part; anyone would get the sense of epic war and waning hope for survival. The bass drums are intended to be a nondiegetic aspect, but they almost sound like war drums, which would be used by major armies in ancient times causing these drums to toy with the line between the story world and the filming world. Another musical quality of the scene is when the Persians sound their trumpets for the charge, playing with the line between diegetic and nondiegetic aspects in this film. The music stops when the Persian army crashes into the Spartan shields, making the watcher focus on the screams and cries of the soldiers until the Spartans stop allowing themselves to be pushed back by the barbarians and dig into the sand. They then use their shields to push the front line of the enemy off of them and stab into their flesh with sharp spears and deadly accuracy. The low tone of the drums picks back up as well as the trumpets and horns when the next row of Persians slam into the shields of the Spartans. The score in this scene ends when Leonidas and his men break ranks and take on the Persians that have not yet been slaughtered, and a variation between slow motion and real time speed takes place in a single shot.

The cinematography throughout the movie is both technical and innovative, following the guidelines of camera work and allowing for more exciting methods of filming the action that takes place in this amazing battle scene. An example of one of the innovative aspects of the scene is where we first see Leonidas in his helmet. The camera is first focused on his eyes then zooms out to reveal the soldiers standing behind him. This could have been done in many other ways, such as having a more open shot showing the soldiers in ranks ready to fight with their helmets on however, this would not have been as intense as showing their leader ready to fight and giving a speech to his men to raise morale in them for the fight which they are about to engage. Another innovative technique that is employed is when the Persians first crash into the Spartans. The camera is set within the group of Spartans, which allows us to see what the Spartans would see, allowing for a type of point-of-view shot, even rocking back when the impact of the collision is first felt. Also, there is a shot where one of the Spartans is cut by a Persian spear and he takes his revenge by stabbing the Persian with his own spear. We never see which Persian it is that cuts the warrior; we only see his spear point. Then the camera is set back far enough to see between two columns of Spartans, the one who was cut and one that we must acknowledge is there without ever really seeing him. At this point we see the angry Spartan take his revenge on the Persian who committed the atrocity. Yet another example of innovative camera work is when there is a cut to the camera set high in the Hot Gates, where the battle takes place, and there is a slow tilt up revealing the massive numbers of dead Persians and the red-caped backs of the Spartans advancing forward. This helps to show how the Spartans are like a swarm of locusts destroying the fields of Persians in front of them, slowly but surely. Finally, there is a long shot focused on Leonidas as he moves through the Persians killing one after another. This shot lasts for a little over one minute but varies between slow motion and real time. In this shot, the camera zooms in and out and moves along with Leonidas as he moves forward. There is one point in which Leonidas throws his spear into the body of a Persian and the camera follows the spear through the air. When the spear lands in the body of the Persian, the camera moves back to Leonidas and is covered for a brief moment by a Persian approaching the Spartans. The Persian is out of focus at this point, providing evidence for the conclusion that the type of lens used for this shot may be a telephoto lens. This makes for an astounding final shot for this scene and also proves to be the most famous shot of the movie.

The biggest aspect of editing in this scene is the amount of slow motion shots that are used, as well as the computer generated special effects. There are three shots of the Persians running toward the Spartans which are all in slow motion. This helps to show the drama of the scene and the emotion that is felt by the participants in the battle, as well as slows down the momentum of the action allowing the audience to feel and see everything that happens. There is another shot that moves between slow motion and real time, in which Leonidas takes on a number of Persians by himself. This allows the viewer to see the strength, speed, and ability possessed by the warrior king. The shot only moves to slow motion when he comes to face his next victim showing his technique and shear ferocity.
There are a few instances of CG used in this scene, such as the spear that is thrown hundreds of feet from the Spartans into the body of a mounted Persian officer who tells them to surrender. This could not possibly happen for a two reasons; the first is the most obvious in that the actor would die. Another is that it would not be physically possible to throw a spear the distance that is shown in the movie. Another instance in which CG is used is when four Spartan spears are thrust into the body of one Persian soldier splattering blood and moving smoothly back out of his body. Also, in the shot where Leonidas takes on the Persians, he slices off the leg of one of them and blood flies through the air. While these things are obviously computer generated effects, they add to the over-the-top quality of the movie, like all the other editing techniques that are used, whether it is the obvious cuts or the hidden ones.

This scene is the most famous of the movie and rightfully deserves it. This scene shows the ferocity of three hundred warriors fighting for their survival from a tyrannical ruler who is bent on world domination. Zack Snyder and his team have done a wonderful job putting this scene together and making it as epic as it possible while still following some conventional rules and playing with others. 300 is a cinematic giant and the fourteenth scene is a great example of why it remains absolutely astounding.

You are Going to Burn After Reading This!

Rating: A-
I know. I’m a genius at coming up with titles for these things, no need to compliment me, unless you want to… This 2008 film by the Coen Brothers is brilliant, which probably doesn’t need to be said because just about anything that Joel and Ethan put their hands on turns to gilded platinum awesomeness. I hadn’t seen this film until a few days ago when my fiancé said that we really needed to put it at the top of the queue on Netflix. Like almost every other human being in the world I had heard of it upon its initial release but for some reason at that point in my life I wasn’t really feeling like the Coen Brothers were exactly my thing, it may have been the Tarantino binge I was on.

One thing that I was excited for was to see Brad Pitt, Tilda Swinton, George Clooney, Frances McDormand, and John Malkovich all in the same film. One thing I noticed while watching this movie was that if Pitt’s character, Chad Feldheimer, were to meet with Pitt’s character from Fight Club, Tyler Durden, he would knocked out within the first two spoken words. The good news is; he would be smiling the entire time. I could not believe just how funny Pitt could be until I saw this film. He truly does amazingly well at playing such an insanely inane person. He’s even got that glazed-over look that tells you that there is absolutely nothing going on in that head of his. I have to add that when Brad Pitt is dancing while running on the tread mill I had to pause the movie I was laughing so hard. I’m laughing just thinking about it. Each actor does such an amazing job in this film it’s almost worth watching just to get an idea about what good acting is; whether it’s about how to show anger like Malkovich or how to be a giant bitch like Swinton. (Disclaimer: I am not saying that Tilda Swinton is a bitch, but her character certainly is). I cannot say enough about the acting in this movie, although it does make you see Clooney as a bit of a douche, but McDormand, who seems to be in almost every Coen Brothers film is hilarious as well. There are other actors who I should give praise to but if I were to mention anyone else I wouldn’t get to what I really want to talk about with this film.

The basic plot of the film is extremely confusing and would be nearly impossible for me to explain here in simple terms like I always try to do. Let’s just say that there is a lot of sleeping around (Clooney and Swinton, which is both hilarious to hear and mostly involves Clooney), a CIA agent (Malkovich) gets kicked out of the Agency and his house, and a moron (McDormand) needs plastic surgery. Trust me, it may be confusing to explain but it is hysterical and completely makes sense if you watch everything in its intended order.

The film is really about levels and what happens when someone tries to move between those levels and even gets kicked completely out of those levels. Now, you may be wondering why I’m not saying “social classes” or “hierarchy”, this is because of the importance of the house in which a lot of the film takes place. I’m not going to give away what happens in this film but I will tell you that there are four levels that we know of; the basement, the ground floor, the second floor, and a mysterious third floor that we never get a glimpse of. Because this is a review and not an analysis of the film, I won’t go any farther than that, but when you watch this film you will certainly understand what I’m getting at with this.

Now there are some other things that I feel need to be mentioned. In many ways, the Coen Brothers always have a way of making their films feel like they are taking real life and just slightly altering it. The Coens are really like scientists of the film industry and love to experiment with everyday people; which is why Frances McDormand is such an asset to this team of filmmakers. There are as with many films some things that just aren’t quite right or slightly annoying like the way John Malkovich pronounces French words or the way he says “memoirs”. (I’m not sure if that’s a French word or not…) I find this funny because if you see early films of his, he sounds a lot like Christopher Walken which is always hilarious, especially in films like The Glass Menagerie.

This is an extremely smart and hilarious film and I definitely recommend seeing it and if you’ve already seen it once, go watch it again. I have spoken.

Drowning in Waterworld

Rating: C
You may be asking yourself, “Dude, seriously? Waterworld? Of all the amazing films in history why choose such a (insert chosen adjective here) one?” I’ll tell you why who-ever-you-are! Because I feel that Dennis Hopper should be given some tribute! Yeah, I’ll bet you forgot all about him being in it, didn’t you? According to IMDb, Dennis Hopper was in 203 films, and that’s just acting mind you. He was also a director and writer, most notably for the piece of film gargantuousity known as Easy Rider. But there are others like the super-cool True Romance written by my favorite filmmaker, Quentin Tarantino, Apocalypse Now, and of course Speed. I know it may be a little late to pay tribute to him now but I think he would appreciate it all the same. Dennis Lee Hopper will be sorely missed.

As for this film however, I have heart-wrenchingly mixed feelings. On one hand, I love the idea that people have literally brought about the next great flood and all of the other Bible story imagery that goes along with it. But on the other hand, where did the giant fish monsters come from? On another hand I really like Dennis Hopper, but on yet another hand I can’t stand Kevin Costner. I don’t know where the other two hands came from but maybe I can finally challenge Goro to that match of arm-wrestling. Anyway, there isn’t much to be said technically about the film but I have to say that the story is downright amazing.

The film takes does a good job of giving you an origin story of sorts, in that it is explained by a mysterious narrator in the first few moments of the film. We never hear from him again but I think it should be assumed that it is God… or maybe his brother, I don’t know but I’d really like to. If you have any ideas please let me know, I’m begging you! He (I can tell it’s a “he” from the voice) explains that the polar ice caps have melted causing the world to be flooded leaving no land to be found anywhere, or so he thinks. We follow alongside of the character known as The Mariner (Costner) throughout the film, showing us the social conditions of the new world that these people are so unfortunate to live in. The best way to describe would be to imagine a world where cavemen had access to alien technology. The Mariner ends up stopping at an atoll on his way to nowhere to refuel his supply of fresh water and trade for various items like a tomato plant, because, as everyone knows, Costner loves tomatoes. While at the atoll, it is discovered that The Mariner is a mutant with gills and webbed feet and because the atoll is filled with fanatical religious types he is persecuted for being different, quite literally. Then the atoll is attacked by Smokers, who are essentially pirates led by The Deacon (Hopper), and allowing for The Mariner to escape with the help of a woman who he tells that he can take her and her daughter to dry land. These three along with a scientist are able to escape from the atoll before it is completely destroyed. Quite quickly, The Mariner learns that the Daughter called Enola (Tina Majorino) has a map outlining the path to dry land tattooed on her back; the only problem is that the directions are in a language that is no longer spoken or written. From there the fun ensues with visits to the past via going underwater and eating giant sea monsters.
From a cinematic standpoint, not much can be said as stated before. The CGI is mediocre at best, and for all of you who want to compare it to other films you must remember that this film was made in 1995, fourteen years before Avatar, so don’t start the comparison competition just yet. As for the direction and cinematography, nothing innovative or cool is done, making the film centered around action and character development coming through due to the story, which along with Dennis Hopper single-handedly saves this film from being something other than quality material and would be a waste of time.

I think it is apparent that I am a super nerd who loves science fiction, but I’ll tell you why. Science fiction gives you something that no other genre can; the stories can be told through almost any world, technological device, etc. and you will never forget it. These are films that you reminisce about later in life when you’re hanging out with old friends. If you don’t think I’m right then you should probably go watch Star Wars one more time.

Why Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is Awesome

Rating: Triple A++
First of all, I’d like to apologize for not having posted anything in quite a while. There have been a lot of changes going on lately for me personally and I have been in kind of a funk lately in terms of not being able to write anything really, other than a few papers for school. However, I think I have found a film to get me back in the groove of things. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is the only film written and directed by Kerry Conran as of yet. Now let’s get some things straight right off the bat, this film is A) phenomenal, and B) not very good. I’ll get to why this is in a minute but first you should know that the story revolves around a female journalist named Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) who always gets her story and when giant flying robots drop into New York City she has to be in on the action and get as close as possible even if she endangers herself and Sky Captain (Jude Law) has to step in and save her. And let the amazement ensue. Now I will explain why this film could have been greater than Citizen Kane but isn’t. In simplest terms, the actors chosen were not the best and general audiences can only take so much science fiction awesomeness. Don’t get me wrong, I love the acting talents of Giovanni Ribisi who plays Dex and I have a fondness for Angelina Jolie, don’t ask. However, these actors only play minor characters and are not involved in enough of the film. I believe that if the lead roles and supporting roles had been switched then the film could very easily have been more appealing to general audiences.

Now for those of you who may have trouble understanding why this movie is so awesome I will give you the top five reasons.

5. Giant Flying Robots – If those three words haven’t already convinced you, I should add that there are three different types of robots one that fires lasers from its face, one that has tentacles for arms, and the other only flies but also has lasers. Enough said, right? No? Okay on to reason number four.

4. Airplanes that become Submarines – Need I say more? No, seriously there are freaking air-sub-plane-marines in this movie!

3. Jude Law Punches Gwyneth Paltrow in the Face – You and I both know she had it coming ever since she showed us just how annoying Young Wendy was in Hook.

2. The Look of the Film – The art style of the film has been called Art Deco, now I’m not sure what that means exactly but it truly is shot in beautiful colors and divine textures. Many of the shots remind me of comic books with a series of silhouetted guns or hands pointing to the sky. It also helps that old comics of Buck Rogers are shown at appropriate times during the film. If you don’t watch this movie for any other reason, then you most definitely should watch it for this.

1. Laurence Olivier – That’s right, Laurence Olivier is in the movie. Now you may be asking yourself, “Wait, isn’t he dead?” Why yes he is, but he has come back to help create the greatest story ever applied to celluloid. The classic actor appears in an unusual but very important role as an Oz-like character.

There you have it, I could have listed other reasons like miniature elephants but even that is giving too much away about the plot of the story which I don't like to do. So, if this hasn’t changed your mind about how amazing this movie truly is then you are either dumb or a Communist… or both, which is the worst kind of Communist.

Man, That's a Good Burger

Rating: B+
Recently, I thought of a movie that I hadn’t seen in a long time. This was a movie that I watched over and over again when it came out. Now, you have to know that when it came out, I was only six years old and was in love with Nickelodeon. Having said that, I was looking into the recesses of the internet and happened upon one of the great childhood movies of all time, Good Burger.

This movie starred one of the greatest comedy duos for childhood entertainment, Kenan Thompson, who is now a star on Saturday Night Live, and Kel Mitchell, who is seemingly nowhere to be found these days. This pair got their start in entertainment with the Nickelodeon television show, All That, which was in essence a children’s version of Saturday Night Live. For what this movie was supposed to be for the kids, it did very well in the acting department, however looking back at it sometime later with adult eyes, I realize that acting does mean a whole lot to kids. However, it doesn’t need to. In its own way, the director, Brian Robbins, gets to teach children a little about the world of competitive business, mirroring actual restaurants like McDonald’s and Burger King. As well as the moral lessons that always come with children’s films, which are basically always “don’t do bad things”, and this film is no exception. The bad guys go to jail for using illegal substances in the food that they are selling to their customers, and the good guys win for sticking to the inventiveness of a dope.

The basic plot of the film follows the path of a very young burger-flipper named Ed (Kel Mitchell) who is as remedial as humanly possible causing a car accident for the unlicensed high school student Dexter Reed (Kenan Thompson) who has just started his summer vacation. After slamming into his teacher Mr. Wheat (Sinbad), Dexter’s friend, Jake (Marques Houston) who was riding in the car runs off never to be seen again, it is presumed that Sinbad caught up to him and threatened to kill him if he did not star in a crappy dance movie with the other members of B2K, but not before putting Dexter in the uncomfortable situation of having to get a summer job to pay for the damage done to his car. After being fired from Mondo Burger, he is offered a job at Good Burger (God, these restaurant names are amazing!) with the help of soon-to-be best friend Ed, at which point the antics ensue. The plot is great and takes unexpected twists with the two meeting celebrities like George Clinton in an insane asylum and everyone’s favorite basketball player, Shaq.

The plot seems to be designed to show off the comedic skills of the pair and does it well. I found myself laughing almost the entire time, except when Dexter talks to Ed about the relationship with his father, at which I ruffled my eyebrows because it did not seem to fit in with the comedic style of the film but did come around in the end to work because of the heart-felt moment when Ed gives Dexter a yo-yo. The only question that is really left for the audience to ponder is; where the hell are the parents? Dexter mentions briefly that his mom is away and at the start of the film we see Ed in his room but that is all of the home life we see for him. Kel kind of gets screwed over in this movie because if you pay attention, he has to be a complete idiot without so much as a last name or parents, possibly even a high school dropout, and only gets the glory of having some special sauce, plus his career pretty much tanks after this film. So who do you think came out better? …I thought so.

From a technical standpoint, this film isn’t anything special. We get to see some trippy flying hamburgers at the beginning of the movie and a cargo truck jumping from a dirt mound onto a mailbox, but that’s pretty much it. However, this film doesn’t need the technicality of a super artistic director to be great. The film is still amazing because it is so character driven which makes the actors responsible for making the film a huge success which it was. The budget for this film was a “whopping” $9,000,000 and came back with a little over twice that, which ain’t too shabby. The actors did their jobs and were rewarded for it.

In all, I love this film. Not because it is a work of art, but what it meant for me as a child. We all have those movies that remind us of days gone by, and even though other generations will look at them and wonder what the hell is wrong with us; we know that “I’m a dude. He’s a dude. She’s a dude. Hey! We’re all dudes.” And all dudes have their day.

I Totally Get Carter

Rating: C
Never in the most deranged parts of my mind would I ever have imagined that Sylvester Stallone would be involved in the same film as Michael Caine, but in the 2000 film Get Carter that is just what we get. This film, directed by Stephen Kay, is based on a book by Ted Lewis called Jack’s Return Home and a remake of the 1971 film of the same name. Not having read the novel or seen the original, I went into watching the film with a total open mind, not expecting the film to meet any preset requirements that I had arranged in my mind. From the very beginning of the film I got overwhelming feeling that I was going to be highly under impressed because of the other recent film choices that Stallone has been making, but I was wrong.

The story of the film revolves around Jack Carter (Sylvester Stallone) returning home from being the major muscle for some sort of mob or casino in Las Vegas to find out about the exact nature of his brother’s death. The details of his job are never truly revealed. The only hint that we get about his job is at the very beginning of the film when he is beating up someone alongside his co-worker, Con McCarty, played by John C. McGinley, who throughout the entire film came off as the exact same character as Dr. Cox from Scrubs. Also, this secondary plot seems to serve no purpose but to hype up the action throughout the film. We never really care when we find out that Carter’s lover, Audrey (Gretchen Mol) will no longer have anything to do with him but will rather stay with her boyfriend named Fletcher (Garwin Sanford) who is Jack’s boss. Because there is little to no focus on Jack dealing with his job and the life he lives in Las Vegas, we don’t really break down and cry over the fact that he is losing his job, his friendship with Con, and his lover. All we really want to see dealt with is how he is going to find out who killed his brother and what he will do when he does.

The only form of sympathy that we see from Jack Carter is when he is around his niece, Doreen who is played by Rachael Leigh Cook. He feels that he must serve as the father figure now that his brother is dead. I’m not going to go into the twists and turns of the film and reveal the entire plot for you but in shear terms of story, the film is great. The problem comes in when we start talking about the technical aspects of the actors as storytellers. This film is very strange because we get two extreme opposites when speaking of acting ability. There are great actors like Michael Caine, who plays a very important character even though he does not get very much screen time, as well as Mickey Rourke, who becomes an eerily great bad guy who disgusts you at the same time. Then we have Stallone who should have retired years ago from the movie business and Rachael Leigh Cook who should stick to movies that don’t have the adult feel that this one does. Cook simply feels miscast in this film, although I understand where she is coming from in terms of her acting. Another positive note to the acting in this film comes from Alan Cumming who plays an extremely wealthy yet very young business mogul. Personally, I have always enjoyed the talents that Cumming has and this film is another instance that I can tack up on my mental cork board.

The best aspect of the film is the cinematography, the entire movie is given a dark tint that makes you feel like it just got finished raining. This is appropriate considering the film is set in Seattle and revolves around some very dark subject matter, so it does not feel unnecessary. Also, there are some shots that stuck into my mind once the credits began to roll. By far the very best part of the entire process of watching this mediocre film was the car chase in which Carter is running from Con who is there to bring Jack back whether he wants to or not. It is nowhere near the same level of great car chases like in The French Connection or Ronin, but what makes it the best part of the film is the audacity to use the camera in a different manner than other chase sequences. The most memorable shot is near the end of the chase when the camera follows Carter’s vehicle by remaining in one place and basically doing a back flip to follow it. Now I am aware that this has been done before and will be done again but what it makes this so great is that it is a physical representation of how Carter’s world is now completely upside down from how it was before this chase. This is the shot that makes the viewer realize how screwed up this character is now and how sucky this situation really is.

One of the aspects that keep this movie from becoming great apart from the acting is the music. The film was filled with what seemed like truly horrible rave music that was purely arranged to give the audience a headache. I’m not sure what was going through the director’s head when he heard those sounds that made him decide to go with it, but it was a terrible mistake.

Stephen Kay’s directing seems to be amateurish but also has instances that are original and interesting and keeps the viewers in their seats. I particularly enjoyed a segment in which Carter throws someone off of a building but we never actually see him push the person off the edge. All we get to see is Carter pushing him around and scaring the hell out of him then there is a cut to Carter walking out of the building onto the street and we see the top of a car caved in with the person laying dead in the middle of the carnage. Kay doesn’t give us the violence directly but instead lets us have only what we need to allow the story to progress.

In all, the film has whispers of greatness but ultimately fails to live up to its potential echoing the ability of the director. This only proves that great directors can only make great movies. Kay has talent but doesn’t seem sure of how to use it with confidence and doesn’t know where his niche is in the film industry. I would suggest watching this film if you are interested in seeing how to use a camera but not for examples of great acting.

In Awe of the Scar Tissue

Rating: B+
How many drugs can a rock star do? How many relapses can a person go through before getting it through their head that this is not the way to go? These are the kinds of questions I found myself asking while reading Anthony Keidis’ autobiography, Scar Tissue. The 400+ page book was an excitingly binding ride filled with sex, drugs, and rock and roll. The star of the Red Hot Chili Peppers discusses his personal history and how he and his friends rose to fame as the in-your-face funk punks that they are known as.

It should not be forgotten that this book is solely about this individual’s journey through his own life and not just one of the band members talking about the struggles they had on their way to stardom. In fact, Keidis makes it clear throughout the book that he didn’t really care whether or not the band made it as a force to be reckoned with in the music industry, he just wanted to jam out with his good buddies and share the love with the world hoping to be embraced.

Almost the entire first half of the star’s account discusses his life before his career and how he gets involved with drugs at the tender age of eleven. He talks about being born in Grand Rapids, Michigan and moving to L.A. to be closer to his father who just so happens to be extremely involved in trafficking drugs to celebrities. This is an absolute recipe for disaster for most kids but not for Anthony. He takes what he has grown up around and with the help of his friends creates some of the most cutting edge music of the eighties and ends up dominating the charts throughout the nineties.

This book was recommended to me by a friend and I had my reservations about reading it because I didn’t think that it would be all that interesting. It seemed like a rock star that just wanted to tell the general public about the hundreds of girls that he has conquered. He made me sit down and just read the opening hook and without a second thought; I bought my ticket and took the ride. The writing is very well done and constantly keeps you moving the entire time you are reading. Whether the book was ghost written by the co-writer, Larry Sloman, is another matter that I am not all that sure about. However, just from the poetic skills that Keidis has in his songs, he could have just used Sloman as a consultant. Whatever the case may be, the writing is very solid with the exception that the use of the word “and” after each word in a list can get to be very old very quick. Unfortunately, that happens a lot. Another unfortunate occurrence is that there were a good number of typos and very obvious mistakes that should have been caught before sending the book out into the world.

One of the major themes that the book tries very hard to get across is Keidis’ cautioning of the use of drugs. He even gives tips on how to deal with those problems should the reader be experiencing them. Keidis is very clear about his caring for other people and easily admits his own faults in some of the situations that have been integral in his life. The book also spares no details on certain sexual exploits that happen very often throughout the book.

There is a great amount of detail that the book is written with that makes you feel like you are right there in the audience, sitting on the bed with him in rehab, or in the studio listening to the raw cuts of the songs. What I like especially about the book is that there are a few sections of pictures that act as a sort of photo album for the times that have already happened and the times that are about to occur soon into the reading. Also, the lyrics from some of the songs are planted in occurrence with the time that they were written letting us see what inspired him to write certain things in his songs. This makes you feel like you are actually inside of the music and every time you hear the song afterward you know what was going through Anthony’s mind when he wrote it thus bringing you closer.

Most biographies are written well into the person’s life but not Anthony’s. He writes more than 400 pages worth of his life when he is only in his mid to late 30s. I would love to see a sequel to this book written just to get the other half of his life that is so mesmerizing. If you have not read this fantastic book, I highly recommend that you go out and buy it. Don’t borrow it from a friend or go to the library. Buy it; it is very much worth it even though there are a few errors in terms of editing.

Two Badass Saints

Rating: B+
The 1999 film, The Boondock Saints, directed by Troy Duffy is an action-packed tale of orphaned twin Irish brothers (Sean Patrick Flannery and Norman Reedus) who take it upon themselves to rid the world of sin. However, the brothers get the attention of the FBI, specifically agent Paul Smecker (Willem Dafoe), when they start killing off the Russian mob in their hometown of Boston. The film takes a journey from the twins’ revelation of becoming the proverbial hand of God to finding out who their father actually is and what he is good at doing.

The brothers are joined by a friend named Rocco, played by David Della Rocco, who serves as the source of comedic relief among the massive amounts of bullets that are constantly whizzing around. The characters seem to be on the edge of insanity throughout the entire film, one of which probably breaks that barrier. Agent Smecker goes beyond his duties as an agent to see the good in what the brothers are doing but in the midst of his epiphany he goes into a fit of hysteria. Dafoe plays the part so well, it’s scary. Dafoe is well known for bringing bad guys to life and shoving the character in your face to scare the hell out of you. By far, Dafoe does the best job in terms of acting within this film but he’s not the only good actor that we see.

Norman Reedus also does a great job playing his role as a vigilante justice seeker. Every time he gets mad, you feel it. Every time he says his prayer, you feel like he’s executing you. I love the way the story plays out. I’ve seen the movie many times now but it is still hard to believe some of the things that happen. Duffy does a great job in telling his story although he could leave out some of the Bostonian cussing which runs ramped throughout the entire film. I like the idea that these two are taking it upon themselves to get rid of everything that’s wrong with the world.

The cinematography is interesting in that there are many scenes in which Smecker visualizes himself being in the same room as the brothers while trying to figure out what is going on. There are a lot of interesting shots that are tried and succeed in making the action more intense or the emotions more potent. These scenes are accented by the music which seems to be chosen in order to make everything about the film more awesome. The wardrobe department did a good job in gauging what was appropriate for a person engaging in activity that lies outside of the law. Sunglasses and trench coats always add to glamorizing handguns even if the ones holding the guns can speak multiple languages and have tattoos on their hands that say “truth” and “justice” in Latin.

As incredibly awesome as this film is, there are a few drawbacks. First of all, not all of the actors were as good as Reedus and Dafoe. The majority of the actors playing various roles in the Russian mob seem to be trying too hard to be bad. None of them seem to draw in kind of emotional response from me, except for maybe annoyed. Also, the film does seem to go a little overboard in making out what the brothers are doing seem great. They are killing people left and right and at the same time making jokes about television shows from days gone by, but we have to realize that when you are surrounded by dead bodies telling jokes may not be an appropriate response. But then again, when the mob has problems with others and their response is extremely gratuitous violence, that isn’t appropriate either.

Duffy’s film is great for making people think about how the violence of the world should be dealt with. It floats along the same lines of revenge as say The Punisher and Kill Bill, but does so with a light-hearted air that makes you wonder if there are some psychiatric issues brewing in the mind of Troy Duffy. These factors, combined with the fact that the film did not make much of a splash when it made its debut, come together to make The Boondock Saints a film that will be remembered as a cult classic.

The Twilight of Vampire Movies

Rating: D
If you are unaware of the recent tween phenomenon known as Twilight then you either live under a rock or are dead. This movie is made by girls for girls. It was written by a woman (Stephanie Meyer), directed by a woman (Catherine Hardwicke), and starred a young female actress named Kristen Stewart who has also been in good movies like Panic Room. Also, a supposedly attractive young male was put in to serve as a love interest. Before we go any further, I would like to make it clear that after the song “Super Massive Black Hole”, which I used to love, was ruined for me during the baseball scene, I could no longer watch this travesty go on any longer. I turned it off and went to read Dracula to heal my mental wounds.

Just in case you are one of the few who have indeed been living under a rock, this film tells a story about a young girl, Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), who moves to Forks, Washington to live with her father after having trouble living in Arizona with her mother. While there she meets Edward (Robert Pattinson), a mysteriously depressed man who never goes to school when the sun is out. In other words, EMO! All of the buzz around the movie makes the character Edward into a vampire. However, that is entirely inaccurate. In fact, Edward even says that he is something similar to a vampire called a “Cold One”. But I’m not here to discuss the fact that these “Cold Ones” are not vampires.

Just because the movie has done amazingly well, does not mean that it is actually a well done movie. Kristen Stewart is a promising talent that will most certainly go on to do better movies in her future. Unfortunately her character in this film is so depressing and typical of a brooding teenage girl that I could not care about her feelings at all. In fact, I found myself yelling at the screen about how stupid she is for playing a baseball game with a bunch of vampire imitators that want to kill her. The judgment of these characters is completely out of whack with the majority of rational human beings. This alone caused me not to care about the characters but rather made me aggravated with them.

Stewart gives a decent performance while every other actor completely sucks. Pattinson was too busy pouting his lips and squinting his eyes to worry about giving some reality to a flat character. Or maybe he did a really good job of interpreting the character that just sucks. I haven’t read the book and I have no intention of reading it because I’m not a twelve year old girl who suffers from guy problems.

The effects weren’t all that great either. During the Spiderman tree climbing scene you might as well have been seeing the wires around Pattinson’s body. He was at arm’s length from the trunk of the tall tree making for a completely ridiculous look for a vampire. Along with terrible looking effects, there was nothing special about the cinematography. It seemed like there was no innovative thought put behind the film. Everything seemed to rely on the attractiveness of the actors even though Pattinson looks like he has Down Syndrome. As previously stated, this was a film made specifically for females. It is simply a redundancy on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet except this version has a moody, sparkling, vampire wannabe.

The only good aspect of the entire film was setting. The landscape was absolutely beautiful, capturing the majesty of the forests of Northwest America. Overall, I have one word of recommendation for people thinking about watching or rewatching this film. Don’t.

Tarantino Rewrites History with Inglourious Basterds

Rating: A
Now before we get into this, I must admit that I am a freak for Tarantino movies. My favorite of his is Pulp Fiction. I love the style in which he directs and the sense of a universe that he creates within all of his movies. It is like he turns his films into an individual member of a family. So if we were to go along with that idea in mind then this film, the latest of Quentin Tarantino's works, would be the old grandfather sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch telling war stories to his children. And the children would be wide-eyed and silent.

Quentin Tarantino rewrites the events of World War II by taking the 1978 film of the same name, directed by Enzo G. Castellari, and places the action in a theater, instead of a train, in Nazi-occupied France, instead of Italy. The film focuses on a rag-tag group of Jewish-American soldiers led by Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), a Lieutenant in the army that has vowed to kill every Nazi that he comes across. At the same time that the Basterds are working their way closer and closer to France from where they were dropped in Italy, Shoshanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) has just had her entire family slaughtered by SS Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) who has the appropriate title of Jew Hunter, a Nazi Sherlock Holmes with pipe to boot. Shoshanna is allowed to escape to Paris where she assumes a new identity as an owner of a movie theater. She becomes the desired object of the young Nazi Fredrick Zoller's (Daniel Brühl) affection. This desire leads to Fredrick convincing Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) to show his new film, Nation's Pride, which is about Zoller's actions in battle that has made him a hero to his people. Shoshanna takes advantage of the opportunity to kill a bunch of high ranking officers with great pleasure.

Meanwhile the Basterds have made themselves feared among the Germans with a certain soldier that they affectionately refer to as Sgt. Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz (Eli Roth) who kills Nazis by bludgeoning them to death with a baseball bat. Even Hitler himself, played by Martin Wuttke, has come to fear the power that this group has gained. The unit makes its way to a village in France called Nadine where they meet up with the British Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) who has a connection with a double agent film actress named Bridget von Hammersmark played by Diane Kruger. Together this group is going to get into the premier of the movie at Shoshanna’s theater but not before plenty of action ensues.

The entire movie is full of the thing that Tarantino loves most, violence. He is even quoted as saying that “violence is one of the most fun things to watch.” When you see this movie that becomes very clear with scenes like The Bear Jew beating the hell out of a Nazi officer’s head or Aldo Raine carving a swastika into the forehead of Hans Landa. This movie is very violent but appropriately so, echoing the horrors of World War II. Obviously, this is not a movie for children both for the fact that it uses the word “fuck” quite often and that it discusses one of the worst events in history.

From a technical standpoint, the movie is very clean in terms of editing and cinematography, which has always been a strong point in Tarantino’s movies. Many shots that are used in this film have been used in his other movies like overheads and shots similar to the trunk shot which is a must have in Tarantino movies. Also, we get a shot of feet. Yes, a shot of feet. For those of you who don’t know, there are two things that you will find in almost every movie by Quentin Tarantino, a shot of a woman’s feet and Samuel L. Jackson, who in this film serves the role of narrator.

Quentin Tarantino is continually growing as a director with every film that he makes and so far, as the last line of the movie states, “this just might be his masterpiece.”

I'm Watching Watchmen

Rating: B+
Being a comic book enthusiast, Zack Snyder’s movie adaptation of the graphic novel, Watchmen, proved to be a cinematic work of art. This harsh and alternate reality of the year 1985 portrays a world where superheroes are the norm and hating them happens just as often as seeing them. When a group of former heroes come back together to investigate the murder of a past colleague after years of disbandment, due to government intervention, they discover a horrible plot to kill millions. Some of these costumed individuals were used, abused, and murdered just as often as they helped. Most people either love this movie or hate it, and the main reasons to hate it are because of the differences from the graphic novel and the not-so-fantastic job in the wardrobe department.

Having read the written work by Alan Moore, after viewing the movie, I have found one main difference between the two, which would be the conclusion to a very twisted tale of a struggle for world peace. Giving away the ending to a newly released movie would be simply rude. However, ending a movie the same way you would end a comic book simply would not work. More people visit the movie theater than read comic books. Maybe it’s because the stereotype about comics is that they are childish and immature, yet going to see a movie about talking chihuahuas is perfectly fine. Some people simply will not buy a giant monster being a conspiracy to create civility between two warring nations, thanks to the smartest man on the planet. This is too much of a science fiction scenario for the general population. It’s not “realistic”, no matter how ridiculous it is to hear someone walk out of a movie saying, “it wasn’t realistic enough” or “that would never happen in real life”. That’s why it’s a movie. Unless it’s a documentary, it isn’t supposed to be realistic. This is why we have a little thing called imagination. But, because the imagination in people has died or is becoming that way, we cannot have a giant monster engineered from an extraordinary man destroying cities and still maintain blockbuster quality. So, we must go with something more “realistic”, a device of war meant to destroy civilizations. Something that was very nice was the homage to the original source, being the genetically enhanced lynx that remains at the side of Matthew Goode’s character, Adrian Veidt, or his superhero name, Ozymandias. Mainstream America can grasp this much easier than the more supernatural occurrence found in the comic. So, this is the compromise that must be made in order to try and entertain everyone that chooses to see this movie.

Another difference from the movie and the written work is leaving out two important characters that we see constantly throughout the graphic novel. These two characters are the newsstand vendor and the kid sitting next to him reading a fake comic, “Curse of the Black Freighter.” These two characters make the audience care about what happens at the end of the movie to everyone that is killed. The graphic novel has a total of twelve chapters and these two characters appear in each one of them. This creates a bond between the reader and the characters that does not occur in the movie. The reasoning for why this could not possibly happen in the movie is simply the time limit. The movie runs for well over two hours, coming close to three, meaning the director would have considered this and must have been relying on the fact that people would have to connect with the fact that it is New York City that is destroyed. It would have hit home with other disasters such as 9/11. This would make people feel sad about what happens but isn’t as effective as using characters from the newsstand. However, these two are shown when the city is destroyed, paying tribute to the graphic novel once again.

Cinematically, this movie is absolutely astounding. The opening montage shows what looks like slow moving pictures, reminiscent of the portraits from Harry Potter. Another great quality about the look of the movie is that a great number of shots are set up to give credit to the graphic novel recreating its scene art, yet again paying tribute. It becomes very apparent that Snyder is a very big fan of the work and wants to make as close to a mirror to the graphic novel as possible. This is very commendable and should be recognized as a great accomplishment in the movie because of its devotion to the source material.

The few differences between the graphic novel and the movie are not so great as to call the movie bad. Acting wise, Jeffery Dean Morgan (The Comedian) and Jackie Earle Haley (Rorschach) were incredible while others like Malin Akerman (Silk Spectre II) and Billy Crudup (Dr. Manhattan) could have possibly been the wrong choices to make. This and some of the costumes and make up could have been justification enough to find faults within the movie. I mean, it was pretty bad to see an obviously fake nose hanging from Nixon’s face that looked like play-doh molded in a farmer’s hands and thrown on a guy’s face and said, “it’ll do.” But, all in all, this incredible twist on saving humanity that has never been done before is reason enough to call this movie great and Zack Snyder’s devotion to the source material should not be over-looked as well. So, should you be watching Watchmen? Most definitely. You’ll be in for one hell of a treat.

Disney Surprises Audiences with Alice in Wonderland

Rating: B-
The new adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, by director Tim Burton, proves to show many that Disney can be a little darker than many would think. With films like Edward Scissorhands and Sleepy Hollow, not to mention his general demeanor, Tim Burton has made his name synonymous with the dark and eerily creepy. The fact that Disney, a kid-friendly company, would go along with scenes of little, blond-haired Alice hopping from decapitated head to decapitated head to get across a moat and a blue caterpillar smoking from a hookah would make most tilt their heads to the side and say “Really?”. While watching this film I found it easy to forget, until after it was over, that this is not the first time Disney has made a visual version of Alice in Wonderland.

It becomes very obvious that Tim Burton is the director of this film when there are trees with gnarled branches to look like fingers and vibrantly neutral colors. The story consists of a twenty-year old Alice who goes back to Underland (the real name of Wonderland) and follows her destiny to save everyone from the tyrannical rule of the Red Queen and restore power to the very peaceful White Queen. The point is made very clear that this film is about Alice’s return to Wonderland and not a remake of the original story, which makes one wonder why a different title was not chosen. The film gives many references to the actual happenings that are found in the book; such as Alice suggesting to her fiancés mother that her white roses should be painted red so that she can have the ones she wanted. Also, there is a montage toward the ending of the film showing the original occurrences of Carroll’s story that appropriately sums up what is needed for the audience to know.

What many potential audience members will want to know about is the performance that Johnny Depp gives as The Mad Hatter. Given that The Mad Hatter is supposed to be somewhat of a tortured soul, Depp is able to show audiences the character’s suffering, and slight insanity, and transform it into a performance that grabs the audience with a loose grip. Depp’s accent for the character does seem to vary at times between British to Scottish apparently without reason, taking away from the film slightly. The actress playing Alice, Mia Wasikowska, will likely be forgotten for her place in this film but does show some potential for improvement and should be looked for in future films. Alan Rickman voices the hookah-smoking, blue caterpillar named Absalom, with a wisdom and superiority that most grandparents use to shower on younger generations. Helena Bonham Carter, a staple of any Tim Burton film, gives a memorable performance as the Red Queen by seeming oddly destined for a role where the character is like a bratty child in control of toy soldiers.

One of the truly great triumphs of Burton’s film is the wardrobe of costumes shown throughout. At the beginning and end of the film wonderful, Victorian-style suits and dresses are shown, paying homage to the time frame in which Carroll’s work was published. Alice’s famous dress from the animated film of days passed is slightly altered by removing the section of white from the front and making it all blue. She is also given a new dress that is typical of the Burton technique, an asymmetrical, red dress with white frills showing black stripes, recalling films like Beetlejuice.

Another amazing aspect of the film is the animation that is so vibrant, real, and innovative. The fact that such a dark-minded film director uses colors that are so vibrant and hit viewers in the face like a baseball bat is innovative in itself, but when the same director uses this technique in conjunction with making his wife, Helena Bonham Carter, into another person with a completely different build, he does enough to make anyone stand back and say “wow!”. When simply watching the film, the viewer gets the sense that close up shots were taken of the actress’ face then digitally added to a computer model of the Red Queen’s body. The two are seemingly melded together and blend perfectly into one another. The mad intensity of colors that are used during Alice’s time at the home of the White Queen makes the screen seem to glow like a portal to heaven. Burton uses the color white on everything in sight, from Anne Hathaway’s hair and dress to the stones supporting the walls of the castle and takes the intensity beyond natural limits to add to the goodness and purity of the character and all her intentions.

Overall, the visual fire that is ignited from the start of the movie burns away the small glitches that are found in the acting and consume the audience in its warm magic. Some of the Victorianly dry comedic aspects may fall flat but the sheer insanity of the Mad Hatter’s dark humor takes control. Disney may have taken a dark route with Mr. Burton, but considering the visual wonder that has been created, I tip my hat.