The Movies of Summer 2010, part 2

Part 2 of the Summer Movie Review. Spoilers abound.


6.)Toy Story 3

Remember being a kid and losing hours to whatever game you had going with your toys? (At my house it was Lady Lovelylocks and Madmartigan in Castle Grayskull with hordes of My Little Pony minions.) The world went away and it was more an alternate reality than a handful of plastic. The closest thing an adult can get to that may be to go see a movie like this one.

I ended up seeing Toy Story 3 twice, once in 3D with my sister and nieces, and once at the drive-in. It was awesome both times. There are plenty of live action movies that are nowhere near as moving or emotional or human as this animated one. Parts of TS3 are hysterically funny and some are heartbreaking and a lot of it is like a dream half remembered from childhood.




The whole opening scene where we get to see Andy’s game from the first movie acted out through imagination-vision was fantastic. As a kid who wondered what my toys did when I wasn’t around, I loved seeing the different toys personalities manifested. Ken doll was hilarious. He and Barbie were so cute. I loved Bonnie’s toys too. Life-changing news! Spanish mode both cracked me up and struck me as totally romantic.



I didn’t actually cry, but I sniffled. I read a review for it complaining about the depression the writer’s kids fell into after seeing it. I have to think if you’re old enough to be depressed about growing older and leaving childhood behind, you’re too old for your mom to be indignant about the cartoons you watch. That’s just me.



As always, I wanted to go home and get all my old toys out of storage after watching one of these. The word is that this is the last one for Toy Story and I kinda hope so. I think the series ended right where it should have.

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7.)Eclipse


Not much of a Twilight fan, but I went to see this one with my sister, who is. I hadn’t seen any of the previous movies or finished any of the books, but it’s so pervasive now that I didn’t really need to. The plot isn’t exactly subtle, after all.

I was braced just to stand it, but it really wasn’t that bad. I thought of Matrix when the normally-scruffy kids are bitten and then turn up as leather-wearing, gel-haired vampires, as if being turned into a vampire makes you look as cool as you always wished you were when you were fourteen.

I liked the vampire flashbacks of how they were turned and the whole puppy-pile comraderie the werewolves had when they were together. I really only had two complaints with Eclipse. The first was that the whole cast had maybe three expressions that they cycled through: blank, intense stare, and some midrange one of vague anger/confusion.



The second was that the hub of all this intense staring and anger/confusion might as well have not been in the movie. Yes, I mean Bella. What does she do? A whole lot of nothing, and yet every other person in the Twi-verse orbits her like the sun. I can expect eternally bored vampires to look well, lifeless, but our heroine delivered every scene from wondering why parents of missing children didn’t just give up to accepting a marriage proposal to freezing to death with the same wooden expression and tone of voice.

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8.)Inception


A moment to gush about the cast: I’ve never been much of a DiCaprio fan. I just haven’t. I only saw Titanic once in the theaters and again when my folks bought it. I don’t have any specific reason to like or dislike him. This time around though (and maybe seeing Eclipse first helped…) I was impressed by all his different expressions. The look of horrified guilt when the shade of Mal confronts Cobb toward the end was perfect. He didn’t have a line and he didn’t need one.



I have also always liked Ken Watanabe (see above). First of all, he’s beautiful, and going past that, his acting is always so understated with all these hints of stuff going on underneath. And Joseph Gordon-Levitt always surprises me. I spent too long watching 3rd Rock from the Sun with him as a cute teenager because it doesn’t seem like any time has passed and he’s suddenly grown up and looking pretty awesome in his period suits.

I was glad to see Cillian Murphy in a non-psycho role. I’ve only seen him in Batman Begins and Red Eye. I spent way too much time trying to remember the Araidne of mythology to figure out why Ellen Page’s character was named that. (I got her confused with Arachne.)

There were lots of little things I liked, such as the surprise!train. I also loved the eternal staircase move. It was so smooth and perfect and the execution of it was better than Matrix. It was a surprise and made perfect sense at the same time. One of my complaints with Inception was how linear all the dreams were, but the staircase thing is exactly the sort of not-quite-right things I have in my own dreams. A lot of the hotel scene, with rooms tilting and people floating and having to kiss to throw off someone after you, was more dream-like. Still, it would need more cats and sentient shadows and people with super powers to be one of my dreams.



I also loved the score. It was throbbing and intense and especially in surround sound. Unlike others, I enjoyed the different time span parts too. I heard some people say that the flicking back to the slow motion fall in the van annoyed them, but I appreciated the reminder. And of course the ending was designed to make you talk about it. Our take on it: I said that it had to be real because the top wobbled and it never did that in the dream, just spun and spun and spun. My sister also offered the possible proof that they all remembered being at the airport, and getting their stuff and being picked up by whoever when Cobb had pointed out to Araidne earlier that she didn’t remember how they got to the cafe. Oh yeah, and Michael Caine said this.

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9.)Salt




First of all, I love me some Lieb Schreiber. Throw in the Russian accents, and that would’ve been enough to keep me entertained for an hour and a half. Luckily for everybody else, there was more than that going on. Some suspension of belief was required, but we didn’t have to stretch it too painfully.

One thing about it was that it did keep us guessing. First we thought she was being framed, then we thought she was a sleeper agent, then what? A double agent. Then no! She’s out for revenge! She’s- wait? What’s she doing now? I’m pretty obnoxious for guessing plot points, so it was fun to not know what was going on for a while.



Angelina Jolie did some cool stunt work and was convincingly badass throughout. I liked all the disguises and the lack of noticeable CG in the fight scenes. Also, Salt wasn’t nearly as bloody as I expected. I saw the broken-bottle-neck-stabbing coming and had braced for it, but it despite the body count, the movie wasn’t that gory.

The way was left open for lots of sequels, so with the Bond franchise in question, maybe Salt can be the new Bond.

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10.)The Sorceror’s Apprentice


There are folks who have nothing good to say about Nicholas Cage. I saw this movie with at least one of them. It was the second movie at the drive-in double feature when we went to see Toy Story 3. It’s hard to not enjoy a movie shown at a drive-in on a summer night with a lap full of nutterbutters and cold Dr. Pepper and with good company. And not only that, I like the shabby vintage look.




Mr. Cage did all right. The special effects were fun. I liked the nesting dolls of evil and I wish there had been more background on all the different evil sorcerers imprisoned in each layer. I liked the animated eagle from the Chrysler building. Every good wizard needs to be saved by a giant eagle at some point, right?

Alfred Molina, last seen (by me) in Spiderman 2 is a good villain. Suave and menacing, with just enough sense of humor to keep him from killing the idiots he’s surrounded by and his kid flunky was just adorable. Somebody needs to adopt him.

What I didn’t like that much was poor Jay Baruchel ‘s voice. It was pretty much Hiccup without the dragons. Well, okay, one dragon. Two, counting the ring. I didn’t catch a lot of expressive range there, but then again, this is a family movie. It’s meant to be fun for kids and at the very least, bearable for the adults. And it is.





This could’ve been a darker, grown up movie. There could’ve been more blood and human sacrifice and the pretty magic could’ve been destructive instead of showy. The endboss could’ve succeeded in casting The Rising and our hero could’ve had to lose everything he cared about in the resulting devastation before he powered up and truly became the Prime Merlinian. This is Disney though, and there’s nothing wrong with that.





To Be Continued…

The Movies of Summer 2010, part 1

Summer! The magical time of year when I head south to the Lower 48 and visit everybody and see as many movies as possible. This summer, I saw thirteen. These are not actual serious reviews, just mostly me gushing about what I liked or didn't or whatever. BE WARNED THOUGH... FROM HERE ON THERE MAY BE SPOILERS! Maybe not big ones or bad ones, but you can't ever tell what'll push some folks to the edge, so YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.

OK.

First on the list:

1.) The Losers

It was fun! The first movie of the summer for me and I had been tormented by Barrow trailers weeks in advance. I hoped I would get back to the lower 48 in time to see it. I just barely made it. I had to cross not one, but two state lines to find a theater still playing it. I had read some of the comic before and was really expecting the movie to be a little darker, but it was a blast!

The group dynamic they have is fun. You see the first part of it with their card game in the beginning and it just builds from there. It works so well that even when there is a betrayal, you can see why. The traitor didn’t just turn bad on them. It isn’t a surprise really, even though you also understand why the others didn’t see it coming.





I really liked that the super-cool, special forces soldier/spy stuff was super-cool (hum the A-team theme here) and as cool as it was, it still had the potential to go very, very badly. The infiltration plot into the security building was awesome and hilarious. I also liked the pinto scene. The action scenes were very cool, the dialogue was all funny, and I ended up liking almost all the characters. Except for one.

The only thing I didn’t like was the villain. Jason Patrick was good when he was bad, but sometimes he was just stupid. Like mocking the Indian guy’s accent. And the death of poor Umbrella-wench? What was that? Just a little reminder that this is the bad guy we’re dealing with now? We figured that out when he ordered the bomb strike on a villa full of kids, thanks.





Other than that, I had a great time. Meanwhile, I burst into a grin every time I hear “Don’t Stop Believin’” now.









P.S.

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2.)How to Train Your Dragon

We missed it in 3D, but I went to see this with Mom because my nieces were so into it. They were three and they knew every dragon by name and what its strengths and weaknesses were. They also knew all the Viking kids. Clearly, we were missing out on something.

It was really cute. The story didn’t have many surprises in it, (outsider uses traits that got him shunned to win the respect of those who shunned him) but I loved all the flight scenes. I can imagine how awesome they would be if they had been in 3D. It was exhilarating just to watch.





I thought that the night fury design was great. For the offspring of lightning and death itself, Toothless was pretty cute. And he looked like he could be a real animal. His anatomy all worked. The other dragon designs weren’t as compelling and looked more silly, which I guess is why Toothless was the main character. All his mannerisms were great, too. He did cat-like things, horsey things, and doggy things and in the back of my (supposedly) adult mind there was one thought: I want one.





I thought Stoick’s rejection of his son was a little over the top. They made such a point of showing how hard both father and son were working to reach each other without the other even realizing it and even had what I thought was a great little scene showing that Stoick was kind of clumsy when he wasn’t pounding dragon skulls to mush and maybe he had been accident-prone as a kid too. And then, he just throws all the effort away like all there is left to do is crush his own child, only to do a full 180 as soon as the wind changes. Sheesh.





And it may be grim of me, but I kinda liked the fact that Hiccup didn’t come out unscathed at the final battle. People in the theater gasped when they saw what had happened to him and I might have been one of them, but it made him all the more heroic for having been hurt that badly. Besides, a Viking needs a few scars and missing limbs to bring in the ladies, right? As much as I love a happy ending, I can’t help but appreciate that sometimes you gotta pay for em.

Again, the flight scenes alone are worth watching it for.

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3.) Robin Hood

I hadn’t planned on seeing this one, but it was family event and an opportunity to try out the new wedges in a mostly-sitting environment.

I’ve seen lots of versions of Robin Hood and for the most part I like them all. It’s a great story, an iconic character, a legend etc. This version had something new though. It killed off the happy ending in the first 20 minutes. King Richard, the only foolproof way to get rid of Prince John, dies in battle. Robin, Little John, Will Scarlett, and the gang have to get home from France without him. And when they get there, Prince John is being canonly obnoxious and canoodling with the niece of his country’s worst enemy, to the chagrin of his papery queen mother.



There was way more politics in this one, war with France, which isn’t mentioned too often in the other versions, some of the class issues, some of the religious issues, and a whole lot of special effects to show how nasty a medieval arrow wound could be. I liked the Queen’s intrigue with her unwanted daughter-in-law and the hoops Marian had to go through to keep her land after her husband’s death. Both of them were women who knew exactly what they were going to have to do to salvage the mess their men had left them in. Also, the phrase ‘yeoman bowman’ entertains me.

There were a few strange things, like the feral children in masks who raided the farms until the French attacked and then they’re all helpful. The repressed memory plot point could’ve been handled differently, I think. I had trouble buying that your average yeoman bowman (hee!) would have blocked out all memories of his revolutionary father and his motto of choice that later ends up engraved on the hilt of a sword of a dying knight whose identity he ‘borrows’ to get back to England and then meets the dead knight’s blind father who just happens to have known his father and offers to tell him about it if he sticks around to be his daughter-in-law’s husband so the sheriff can’t take their land from them. Oh, and the daughter-in-law happens to be Cate Blanchett.



Max von Sydow is awesome in it. He plays the blind father-in-law and packs it full of personality for a role that’s mostly exposition. And Cate Blanchett always comes through. Her chemistry with Crowe was better than expected and he pulled off the gruff good guy thing without any of the Gladiator over the top-ness. I usually like my ‘humans should be free!’ speeches in Robin Hood movies to come from Morgan Freeman, but this one was all right, too.

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4.) The A-Team

Bum-baba-BA!
I was pretty neutral about seeing this at first. Then I saw the trailer with the new B.A. humming the old TV theme song while on stake out and I knew I was gonna have to see this, if only for old times sake. I used to watch the show every week. I might have been seven. I think Murdock was my favorite. I digress.




This movie. Was FUN. Ridiculous fun. “They’re not trying to shoot down the other drone, they’re trying to fly that tank!” fun. I wore a stupid grin for most of it. It was a lot like The Losers, same general idea and same sense of humor. These were characters from my childhood, though, so there was more for them to work with.



I loved the van crashing through the wall in the middle of a 3D movie. I liked that they explained WHY B.A. was afraid of flying. I liked that Jessica Biel’s character was competent and pretty, that she wasn’t chasing them around all lovestruck. She never caught them and she did return to Face’s arms, but she wasn’t all moopy or totally hardassed about it. She was the girl without being The Girl, if that makes any sense at all.

I haven’t seen Patrick Wilson since Watchmen, and I kept trying to remember if Lynch was a bad guy from the original show or just one of the many characters trying to catch the team. I still don’t remember TV Lynch, but the movie one was definitely a bad guy, even when he was pretending he wasn’t. He did have an annoying ‘talk-you-to-death-instead-of-just-efficiently-shooting-you’ scene, but it was fun to see him stress out when his plan came apart.

Anyway, it was pretty much a movie version of the show. I read a few reviews that really had nothing good to say about the movie, but I figure those are from people who didn’ t like the show either. And I liked the new actors. Neeson was leadery. Cooper was ladiesmanny. Jackson was badassy. Copley was crazy-y. It was fun! And I heard there were cameos of the original TV cast, but I didn’t see them until the end. And then I squealed. I am a fangirl. I do wish Mr. T had cameo-ed with them, even if it was just a flashback of this B.A.’s tough guy hero or something. Then, it would’ve been perfect.





Aw.

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5.) Nightmare on Elm Street

I watched this movie with Karon and we made like guinea pigs all through it (flinch, flail, squeak!). I liked it. The original NoES was the first movie that ever really scared me that wasn’t Jaws. For the first time, the middle of the bed wasn’t safe! And when the girl gets dragged up the wall?? Gah! But it scared me so bad I didn’t watch it again for years, so I was able to work up the nerve to see the remake.

There was already clamor from the original NoES fans, but I watched Renegade for Jackie Earle Haley without bleeding eyeballs, so I figured I could watch this, even if it was terrible. And I don’t think it was, even if I don’t remember the original well enough to compare it too.





I liked the opening sequence with all the blocks spelling out ‘bad’ and ‘scared’ and stuff while ominous drawings went on in the background. I wish they had left off the obvious font credits and let the creepy child stuff do it. I liked that all the kids, now teenagers, all had something wrong with them. One had anger issues, one was on medication, one was the repressed angsty artist, and one had the most robotic relationship with her mother I’ve ever seen. Even if they didn’t remember, they were already messed up somehow.

I liked the sense of menace from the new Freddy. It was as if he was going to kill them and he was going to enjoy it, but it wasn’t just for fun. There was some revenge going on first. Much more sinister. There’s a line in there where one of the kids asks what he wants from them, and instead of something pervy or gross, Freddy asks something about changing the past and bringing back the dead. And there’s anger there, that would come from anybody chased down and burned alive, guilty or innocent. I liked the creepy claw-caress over Nancy’s hand. And when he mocks the one kid for screaming before he’s even hurt. I think it’s the same kid he tells about brain activity going on longer than the body’s alive so even death isn’t an escape.

“Gah!” I said.

“That ain’t right,” Karon said. The guy behind us laughed. At us, not the movie.

I also liked the sharpening, scissory thing he did with the blades. Yeek. I liked the whole lynch mob scene. I didn’t recognize Clancy Brown until I heard the voice. Kurgan vs. Krueger? Hm. The nightmare-library story time scene spooked me and I liked the Pied Piper comparison. That fairy tale always struck me as creepier than its delivery.

I read a review that complained that there was no suspense and that the burn make-up was revealed in the first kill and so on, but I kinda figured the beauty of a remake is that we already know the story and the character, so why bother hiding everything until the end? And it’s not like we were sitting around waiting for something to happen. The kills started hard and fast, and something creepy was lurking around most of the corners in this movie.

I was kinda hoping that the movie would be more surreal and swirling with nightmare imagery. Less like the original and more like The Cell, maybe. Much like the Pied Piper story, the idea of the original NoES movies was so much creepier than the some of the delivery, and I wanted to see that kicked up a few notches. So here’s hoping the dreams will get more dreamy and the nightmares more brain-bending in the sequels. Which I will see. If my fellow guinea pig will go, too.





TO BE CONTINUED....

Things to Do on Vacation

Stormwatching.


A front porch is a wonderful place to be to have kittens play in your lap and watch a storm move in. It's soothing. At about 3:40 on it you'll see a deer run over the hill and then the rain really starts pouring.



You'll notice everything go a little sideways when the rain also started going sideways and I started getting soaked. I didn't film the OMGstorm!explosion, but I did get a few seconds of the aftermath once we were all safe inside.

Hello, Moon

I don't have a camera made for night pictures, but the last full moon was so screaming bright, I had to try.
Look at that. Like a fire ball or a volcano over the mountain.



You'd think it was the sun rising instead of the moon. (That glow at the bottom was a reflection off a puddle.)



Even through the trees, it's like a headlight.



And then there's this:



It always unnerves me when one picture is weird out of a set that I didn't do anything different with. We're gonna blame that on my NOT-night vision camera and hope there's no such thing as moon snakes.

Where Did You Come From, Where Did You Go

Assuming I haven't forgotten any or gotten them confused.


visited 31 states (62%)
Create your own visited map of The United States


visited 17 states (7.55%)
Create your own visited map of The World

Another Storytime Review:

Tony Diterlizzi has been a favorite illustrator since the Monster Manual and it was his name that caught my eye looking through the library. It was The Spider and the Fly by Mary Howit. I gave it a quick flip through and it had great pictures and bugs, so I knew the kids would love it. I got it with a few others, and put it in the to-be-read pile. I usually read everything myself before reading it out loud, but the black and white cover stood out amongst the others and got the kids’ attention immediately. They wanted to hear it right then, that day. So I did.



The illustrations are amazing. They are like an old black and white movie from the 30s. There is so much detail in everything from the Spider’s gothic mansion to all the period costumes and all the character’s little bug features.



The poem was fun to read, and the message was clear, even to the little ones: Don’t go off with a stranger just because he talks nice.

The kids could TELL the Spider was up to no good. Even if they didn’t know what spiders do and what they eat, the illustrations show an arachnid monster, smartly dressed and smiling, but all fangs and grasping hands under it. As if that’s not enough, there are poor transparent little ghost bugs, the Spider’s previous victims, trying to warn the little Fly away. The kids agreed with the Fly when she kept putting the Spider off and then were disgusted when she let the flattery entice her inside.



They knew better than that, and she should have too.

I had at least one other teacher warn me about reading it to little kids, dismayed at the unhappy ending. The kids I read it to enjoyed it though. They liked it because it was spooky and a little macabre and they enjoyed the concept of consequences. The Fly did NOT do what she was supposed to and she got eaten. Pretty harsh punishment, but at least she has the previous ghosts to sympathize.

Gotta Hand it to Em

Sometimes, the K3s won't do something unless I do it first.



Not that I mind.

Y for Yarn Yaks. Yes.

Letter Y. Y Yes. The Ys have it.

We could've yodeled. We could've yawned. Instead we made paper plate yaks and gave them yarn hair.



Adorable! And then there's these two...



And maybe it's just me, but don't they look a lot like these two?