From mleeper at optonline.net  Tue Dec  8 13:03:58 2009
From: mleeper at optonline.net (Mark R. Leeper)
Date: Tue Dec  8 13:04:01 2009
Subject: Review: Bright Star (2009)
Message-ID: <op.u4dhjpoby83cp7@mail-hub.optonline.net>

                           BRIGHT STAR
                (a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

     CAPSULE: Director and writer Jane Campion gives us
     the story of the ill-fated love of Fanny Brawne for
     the impoverished poet John Keats, one of England's
     greatest.  Were it not for the tragic tone the
     story, set in the early 1800s, it would fit nicely
     into Jane Austen territory.  We have a story of love
     doomed by poverty.  Keats has the dilemma of having
     neither the time nor money to have a relationship
     with Brawne, as he is trying desperately to be a
     great poet.  BRIGHT STAR bogs down in the middle and
     only moves again when things become even worse for
     Keats.  Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10

One of my more controversial film reviews was that of Jane
Campion's THE PIANO, a film well-liked and highly rated by the
critics, but which I found to be no more than an over-wrought soap
opera.  Years later I was still getting mail from people who also
did not like the film.  I think that Campion's talent has improved
over the years, but I am still not keen on her choice of story.
And like that film she is still telling tragic tales of the great
and under-appreciated destroyed by convention.

BRIGHT STAR is the story of a doomed romance.  Fanny Brawne (played
by Abbie Cornish) is attracted to John Keats (Ben Whishaw), her
neighbor and her mother's tenant who is an aspiring poet.  She is,
however, frustrated that Keats does not reciprocate her interests.
Keats is mired in the depths of poverty, and he is practicing for a
profession, poet, that pays very little and that pay goes only to a
very select few.  The poet has enough to do to stay alive and, in
spite of his romantic profession, cannot himself give in to
romance.  Keats slowly relents and reveals some affection for
Brawne, but only in the most stifled manner.  Nor does he feel he
can bridge the difference of social class between his and Brawne's.

The main characters of this film form an unconventional triangle,
though not exactly a love triangle.  Keats has affection for
Brawne, but he also has loyalty to his mentor, one Charles Brown
(Paul Schneider), a crude and rude vulgarian and a co-tenant of
Brawne's mother.  Brown and Brawne detest each other almost
immediately and Brown baits and patronizes Brawne.  They both vie
for Keats's time and attention.

The first twenty minutes of BRIGHT STAR are enjoyable in a sort of
Jane Austen-y sort of manner.  We have a view of early 19th century
life filmed darkly and coldly by Greig Fraser.  Eventually Brawne
wins Keats over so that he does show his affection, but he still is
not solvent enough to give her much hope.  It is a stalemate and
the film remains stuck in this impasse for most of the rest of the
film.  Things happen, but the plot takes its time in progressing.

We see a great deal of Keats sitting around and thinking about
poetry and talking to his mentor, but the film really gives us very
little insight into the poet himself or his craft.  We are told his
poetry is special, but we do not know how it gets that way.
Campion does not know how Keats gets his inspiration and is not
willing to speculate for the viewer.  He apparently just sits in
concentration and makes it up.  We get a little better impression
of the fashion-conscious Brawne.  Her interest in Keats comes
naturally, but she has to force herself to be interested in poetry
and it seems only because she knows a poet.  Most frustrating is
Charles Brown, who hardly seems to be of a poetic nature at all and
who taunts Brawne.  Like the Billy Zane character in TITANIC, he
has almost no lines in the script not intended to make him seem
more detestable.  Each time he speaks we like him less.  When we
first see him he is smoking a cigar, a clich<UTF16-201A> for selfish,
inconsiderate male.  And he lives up to that assessment in his
every scene.  He is written less as a character than as a slow-
motion natural disaster.  Campion is good as a filmmaker, but her
stories have a touch of polemic.  She is a better director than a
writer.

This is a worthwhile story told with lukewarm emotion.  The doomed
love comes off as less a tragedy than a pity.  The background makes
this story more interesting than the foreground does.  I rate
BRIGHT STAR a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10.

Film Credits: <http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0810784/>

What others are saying:
<http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/bright_star/>


					Mark R. Leeper
					mleeper@optonline.net
					Copyright 2009 Mark R. Leeper

From mleeper at optonline.net  Tue Dec  8 14:06:59 2009
From: mleeper at optonline.net (Mark R. Leeper)
Date: Tue Dec  8 14:07:01 2009
Subject: Review: Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
Message-ID: <op.u4kxsch6y83cp7@mail-hub.optonline.net>

                        FANTASTIC MR. FOX
                (a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

     CAPSULE: Wes Anderson brings us a thoroughly delightful
     animated film.  With wit, grace, and charm we get the
     story of a fox trying to evade three nasty farmers who
     are trying to kill him.  But the animal characters are
     written very human and at the same time very funny,
     and they are made real by an all-star cast of familiar
     voices.  Add a bunch of clever film references and we
     get a lot of film for the price of a ticket.  Rating:
     low +3 (-4 to +4) or 8/10

I cannot say that I am terribly fond of the Wes Anderson comedies,
films he both writes and directs.  His quirky and disjointed sense
of humor is selective in its appeal and it rarely selects me.
BOTTLE ROCKET and THE ROYAL TANENBAUMS have their moments, but
RUSHMORE, THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU, and THE DARJEELING
LIMITED just seem disjointed and misaimed.  His characters do not
seem to be real people, but more writing exercises.  I expected
little from his animated film FANTASTIC MR. FOX.  Ironically
animated film is just the sub-medium to make his writing sing.
Perhaps real people do not talk in the Anderson style, but animated
animals are not real people and you expect them to be a little
quirky.  It works well.

FANTASTIC MR. FOX is a film in which even the errors work in its
favor.  For example, the animation seems to be done in stop-motion
with fur-covered models.  In KING KONG the models were covered with
real fur and it showed in the animation.  As the models were
repositioned the fur was accidentally re-arranged.  That was
considered a mistake for KING KONG, which was supposed to be
happening in the real world.  The foxes and other animals in
FANTASTIC MR. FOX do not have seemed real, perhaps.  Instead they
come off a little like charming dolls, and that works for the film
better than it would have if they were photo-realistic.  This is a
world that is about at the same level of reality as THE WIND IN THE
WILLOWS or perhaps Pogo.  Further Anderson's film is made more
winning by taking a step backward in technology by being three-
dimensional models built on armatures.  The characters have an
organic feel to them; they seem tactile or even pettable.  They are
not made up of vectors in a computer; they feel like there is
something touchable and solid in front of the viewer.  I will not
talk down Pixar, the animation studio that makes so many good
films, but FANTASTIC MR. FOX shows the tactile feel that is missing
in their films.  It is the same phenomenon that makes the fans
prefer Ray Harryhausen's creations to purely CGI effects.

Mr. Fox (voiced by George Clooney) and Mrs. Fox (Meryl Streep) are
happily married.  Okay, hold it right there.  This is not a film
about young 20-somethings.  In fox years they are probably 40-
somethings.  This is a film aimed at adults as much as it is at
children and the whole spectrum should find this film rewarding.
It is not clear that younger viewers will get some of the allusions
like the opening with "The Ballad of Davy Crocket" or a sound
effect borrowed from THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT or a line borrowed
 from REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE.  But everybody should appreciate the
characters.  And the film has its share of serious issues and of
laugh out loud moments.

Mr. Fox is (incredibly) suave like a George Clooney or a Cary
Grant.  Mrs. Fox is warm and wise and even when the couple has a
falling out, you can feel the love these characters have for each
other.  Perhaps it required good actors to bring that off with
foxes.  I frequently ask why have highly paid stars doing voices in
animated films when the producers could be giving talented unknowns
a shot.  But this film needed good actors, and the acting talent
was there in Clooney and Streep and about eight other familiar
actors.  I will not list the lot of them because that would spoil
the fun of reading the closing credits.

Okay, the plot.  This is an adaptation of the book by Roald Dahl.
It is the story of a turf war between Mr. Fox and three nasty
farmers who are trying to rid their land of the chicken-stealing
fox.  Mr. Fox is actually no longer a chicken-thief and now writes
for a newspaper, but the farmers have long memories and do not
forgive.  The story is a battle of wits between the three farmers
and Mr. Fox.  Frankly the story could have been stronger, but the
viewer cares more for the characters and style more than the plot.

"Wit, grace, and charm" is a lyric for one of the songs in the
film, but it could have been describing the film itself.  Told with
its breezy style, this could be the most charming film of the year.
I rate FANTASTIC MR. FOX a low +3 on the -4 to +4 scale or 8/10.

Film Credits: <http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0432283/>

What others are saying:
<http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1197696-fantastic_mr_fox/>


					Mark R. Leeper
					mleeper@optonline.net
					Copyright 2009 Mark R. Leeper

From winklebeck at hotmail.com  Tue Dec  8 14:07:32 2009
From: winklebeck at hotmail.com (Tim Voon)
Date: Tue Dec  8 14:07:34 2009
Subject: Review: Land of the Lost (2009)
Message-ID: <d3e80630-da25-4ba2-9cb6-88a1f1d9da9c@h14g2000pri.googlegroups.com>

Film Review - Land of the Lost 2009
By Tim Voon
1 out of 5 stars

I'm not sure where to begin with this movie. Frankly, I'm almost at a
loss for words after viewing LAND OF THE LOST 2009 and being bombarded
with images of one of the silliest attempts at movie humour to hit our
screen.

I should have seen this coming, after all it stars Will Ferrel, but
even this is considered pretty low in the long list of silly movies to
emerge from his neck of the woods. I should have known better then to
have clicked that box asking Qickflix, my online DVD store, to mail it
to me. I should have stopped watching when I saw the ape man dressed
in the guerrilla suit start hugging Will's legs and fondling his
crotch .... but I kept watching, sigh.

When I heard that a movie called LAND OF THE LOST was being made, I
had hoped that it would carry the same style of adventure that the
1974 Television series portrayed. It had a kind of Jurassic Park/
Indiana Jones feel about it. When I heard that it was being carried by
Will Ferrel, my heart dropped and missed a beat.

In short, Will Ferrel is Dr. Rick Marshall a scientist who believes
that Tachyon beams can in fact allow a person to travel through time,
space and into alternate realities. His theories are rejected by his
scientific peers and Matt Lauer, until on an expedition with his two
companions ends up over a waterfall and into the prehistoric alt
universe. How this occurs, is never fully explained. At this point,
the movie slides down into a pool of sillier and sillier happenings.
His travelling group befriend an Ape Man called Chaka (Jorma Taccone)
who is literally dressed in a monkey suit and mask that I could have
rented from a costume party shop. They are then attacked by green
aliens and a sinister head alien who wants to steal Dr Marshall's
tachyon technology to do great evil. At this point in time, I am
screaming how do movies like this even get the funding to be made ....
oh, it stars Will Ferrel.

A big part of the problem with this movie is how amateurish it looks.
It is as if the Production team really didn't go to a lot of trouble
in making the settings of the alternate universe believable. A good
example is Chaka but a better example are the aliens - they are
dressed in green suits that my grandmother could have made on her
sewing machine, big bulgy shiny eyes and some sharp teeth ... and that
is meant to like scare us silly with laughter? The T Rex is of course
computer generated but it would probably be more on par with a BBC
production of a dinosaur documentary than what would expect from a
multi-million dollar Hollywood production.

The movie moment that I most remember and probably would most like to
forget, is when Will Ferrel discovers a way to return to our universe.
However, standing in his way is the T-Rex who has been hounding to eat
him the whole movie. With his eyes opened wide he pole vaults straight
into the T-Rex mouth and belly, this is followed by his girlfriend
(Anna Friel) telling the T-Rex off for eating the only person who
cared about him (this is in reference to the fact that Dr Marshall
believe that T-Rex's were actually very intelligent beings). In a
moment of rage she rips of her belt and starts whipping the green
aliens who retaliate and capture her. The other travelling companion
(Will Stanton) comes to her aid by grabbing Chaka the ape man as a
weapon in a vain effort to ram the green aliens. They are easily
subdued and about to be eaten when Will Ferrel emerges triumphant on
top of the T-Rex who swallowed him earlier, in order to save the
day!!!!!

I guess I expected a more serious, adventure style plot with doses of
good humour with this movie, I just wasn't expecting the ridiculous.

www.filmnet.com
winklebeck@hotmail.com

From winklebeck at hotmail.com  Tue Dec  8 14:08:29 2009
From: winklebeck at hotmail.com (Tim Voon)
Date: Tue Dec  8 14:08:31 2009
Subject: Review: Mutant Chronicles (2008)
Message-ID: <5c66b9a6-434c-4349-a0a5-9712ed500b0e@a10g2000pre.googlegroups.com>

Film Review - Mutant Chronicles 2008
By Tim Voon
2 out of 5 stars

On occasion I do like to borrow a mindless movie about zombies/mutants
who wreak death and destruction on the world, and I got exactly what I
asked for - the mindless bit.

The year is somewhere in the future, on some distant planet where a
mysterious machine hidden beneath the earth is converting the dead and
dying into killer zombies. Throw into this kung fu, a mysterious cult
that believes in a saviour who will come and save humanity by
destroying the machine and John Malkovich and you will get a strange
brew of zombie bodies.

Did I really understand what was going on? Not really. Did it really
matter, not really - it is after all a mutant zombie movie and things
don't really have to make sense as long as the body count keeps
mounting. The surrounds of this science fiction world is computer
generated, similar to what was seen in SIN CITY and THE SPIRIT.
However the quality of the CGU is inferior and the artificial look is
detrimental to the quality of the movie. There is plenty of gore as
expected, bodies being pierced by sharp objects, heads being
decapitated. In fact the only moments of bright colour comes from the
bountiful splashes of blood thrown on screen. Otherwise, everything
else is a haze of greys.

The movie begins in the trenches of a fierce battle. The first
impression is that one is in the trenches of the western front of the
first world war. Before long we have zombies amassing the field
slaughtering men like chickens at a processing plant. Confused? I was.
Then the movie flips to the near future and we have fighter monks (Ron
Perlman) recruiting battled hardened soldiers (Thomas Jane) to fulfil
a prophecy about saving humanity by destroying the zombie mutant
machine. John Malkovich has a brief moment citing some lines before he
is quickly killed off by the mutants.

I think this movie fails not just in the CGU quality department but
also in the storyline and tension department. I realised somewhere in
the middle of the movie after a few hundred thousand people had been
wiped out by this plague that I wasn't feeling any excitement or
worry. I was on edge of my seat in the first 5 minutes of 28 DAYS
LATER, which is a gold standard for zombie movies in my book. In fact
I was busy looking at the clock and ended up reading the paper as
innocent people were being slaughtered.

Somewhere in the middle of the religions mumbo jumbo and kung fu
fighting, and Thomas Jane being converted into a half mutant my
interested picked up towards the end. At least there was a
satisfactory explanation to the chaos, but I realised had gone through
90 minutes of horror without feeling any tension or fright for that
matter. Fail.

www.filmnet.com
winklebeck@hotmail.com

From Tristan_White at rocketmail.com  Tue Dec  8 14:09:12 2009
From: Tristan_White at rocketmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Trist=E1n_White?=)
Date: Tue Dec  8 14:09:16 2009
Subject: Review: Lulu und Jimi (2009)
Message-ID: <d302f0fd-28c8-45b6-ba16-72961402205b@n35g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>

LULU AND JIMI (LULU UND JIMI)
Directed by: Oskar Roehler
Review by:  Trist?n Harvey E. White
Rating: (0 to *****):    ** (two stars out of five)

I was very much looking forward to seeing this film at the German Film
Festival in London earlier this week, but while the film as it stands
is occasionally entertaining, I was confused as to what the point of
this project was.

Let me explain: LULU AND JIMI is, basically, a German version of David
Lynch's wonderful film WILD AT HEART. But yet, somehow, it is not a
remake, as the characters and location are different, and the story is
only marginally similar.

Which is probably the main problem. The film is neither a remake nor
an homage. I would say it is more a "pastiche" of WILD AT HEART (WaH),
and I don't really like pastiches.

Before I continue in this vein, let me explain myself more clearly. I
should point out now though that I'm going to be giving some of the
story away so, if you haven't seen the film yet, stop reading now.

It is 1959, and Lulu (cf Lula in WaH), played by Jennifer Decker (who
has shades of Pen?lope Cruz about her) lives with a rich but crazy
family. The mother is an alcoholic (cf. the Dianne Ladd character in
WaH) a racist, and clearly was a Nazi sympathiser, who wants her to
marry someone else. But Lulu falls for the black American Jimi (London-
born Ray Feardon, better known as Nathan Cooper from Corrie, or
Malcolm Tumelo from Doctors), who works with the dodgem cars in the
local funfair. Jimi fights with Lulu's brother (who ends up wheelchair-
bound) and he ends up going to prison for it, only to be released
after Lulu testifies against her family. Meanwhile, Lulu's mother is
trying to turn her daughter into someone more docile by using her Dr
Mengele-type friend to inject a drug into Lulu, a practice he already
had carried out on Lulu's own father as seen in various
flashbacks.Lulu and Jimi escape, meet a female traffic accident victim
(cf Sheilyn Fenn in WaH), they go to a gig where Jimi sings Lulu a
song (cf "Love Me Tender" in WaH). The best bit about "Lulu und Jimi"
is probably the character of Harry Hass (cf Willem Defoe's Bobby Peru
in WaH), who tries to take Jimi on a robbery and then almost rapes
Lulu back in the motel. Hass is just as vile a character as Peru, but
this version works particularly well because the climax (no pun
intended) is very funny, whereas the Bobby Peru scene is rather
uncomfortable viewing.

Throughout the movie, there are direct parallels with WaH, whether
it's Lulu's mother smudging her makeup, the "yellow brick" lines in
the motorway, Lulu rapidly stamping her feet after they hear a song on
the radio while parked, etc. The film, unsurprisingly, is dedicated to
"David L."

So what's the problem? Well, I have to ask myself, WHY?  I hate
remakes, period. But I can understand their relevance, because some
people either don't like watching subtitled Korean (etc) movies or
they live nowhere near a decent arthouse cinema. So the only way they
will get to see these stories is by seeing a remake (sadly).

But LULU AND JIMI is completely different. Firstly, it's only "kind
of" a remake, as you have seen from my short review. Secondly, most of
the audience who would watch LULU AND JIMI would have already seen
Lynch's WILD AT HEART. And, to be honest, you almost *need* to have
seen WILD AT HEART to get some of the in-jokes. Why? Because, as I
have said all along, this is not a remake. It is more an homage, or a
pastiche, and therefore you need to know the original to understand
the essence of this film.

The whole experience left me rather unsatisfied. For a start, WILD AT
HEART is a wonderful film, so is there really any point? The best
homage one can pay to that film is to watch it again. Whereas LULU AND
JIMI reminded me of Sanjay Gupta's 2002 Hindi language film KAANTE,
which is about six bank-robbers who pull off the perfect robbery only
to discover that one of them is an undercover copper. Cue paranoia,
ear mutilation and shootouts in warehouses. A good film, but on the
whole absolutely pointless. If you like this kind of film, you'll
prefer RESERVOIR DOGS (which is easier to get hold of anyway). If
you've seen RESERVOIR DOGS, you won't really want to see this later
second-rate version.

Reviewer:  Trist?n White
***********************************************************************
94 minutes.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0763844/
LULU UND JIMI has been doing the festivals throughout 2009, and has
already been to Sundance in the USA and the German Film Festival in
London, UK. It is not yet on general release in either country, but
look out for it at your nearest festival. It is shown in Dublin,
Ireland on 13 December, and will no doubt feature in various festivals
around the planet over the coming months.

From winklebeck at hotmail.com  Tue Dec  8 14:10:12 2009
From: winklebeck at hotmail.com (Tim Voon)
Date: Tue Dec  8 14:10:15 2009
Subject: Review: Genova (2008)
Message-ID: <a8c21ef8-aac4-44d2-9636-7c4b4143f2f0@c34g2000yqn.googlegroups.com>

Film Review - Genova 2008
By Tim Voon
2 out of 5 stars

GENOVA is an interesting study of how the sudden death of a family
member can affect the dynamics within that family. Starring Colin
Firth, this independent film is set initially in the cold winters of
Chicago before moving to the warmer climes of sunny Italy  - Genova.

The opening sequence is of particular interest. A mother (Hope Davis)
driving her car along the cold slippery roads of Chicago in winter,
her two young girls (Perla Haney-Jardine and Willa Holland) happily
playing a seemingly harmless guessing game in the back seat of the
when the unthinkable happens. Director Michael Winterbottom (A MIGHTY
HEART) purposely stretches out this sequence and the viewer is
initially lulled into a sense of security by the laughter and
joviality between the mother and daughters; but as the fun goes on,
the zooming cars and trucks on the snow covered roads become louder
and faster, until the laughter and joviality becomes uncomfortable.
You are left with a feeling of impending dread and threat. This sets
the tone for the rest of the movie.

The movie then moves quickly onwards to Italy, where the family has
moved to escape the past. We are met with the screams of the youngest
daughter (Perla Haney-Jardine) at night. She blames herself for her
mother's death and is haunted by visions of her dead mother. This
leads her to become lost on a mountain and almost hit by oncoming
traffic on a busy road. I found this topic a little confusing as it is
never fully explained or resolved by the end of the movie. I could
only put it down to acute hallucinations as a result of unexpressed
guilt and grief over her mother's death.

On the other hand the older sister (Willa Holland) expresses her grief
in a different way - through her sexuality. There is a very natural
love making scene with an Italian boy which shows why the Italians are
such sensual lovers. In the meantime the father (Colin Firth) goes
through his own personal journey caught in a love triangle between an
Italian student and an old flame (Catherine Keener). This movie
proceeds by frequently flipping between the dilemmas of father and
daughters.

In the midst of all these relationship issues, director Michael
Winterbottom again builds tension and threat into the most ordinary
things. Like a simple walk down an old cobblestone alley is made to
look threatening, because of the camera angles, shadows, strange
noises and faces. The viewer is made to think something awful is about
to happen like at the beginning of the film but the discomfort
dissipates as quickly as it started. There is another uncomfortable
scene (especially if you're afraid of heights), when Colin Firth
believing his daughter lost, runs frantically up a treacherous
mountain path in the dim twilight. He keeps stumbling on the slippery
slope as stones and pebbles roll from under him and over the cliff.
You feel that he is about to fall to his death in his panic, the
tension builds and again quickly dissipates. I guess in some ways this
is reflective of life - those moments when we believe that something
awful is about to happen and are utterly relieved when it doesn't.

The scenery of Genova was magnificent. If this movie was filmed in a
less sunny clime it would have been depressing. The actors were
convincing and believable and I appreciated that the movie was trying
to touch on some important topics of death, grief and guilt.
Unfortunately, I found it too slow and contrived for my liking.



www.filmnet.com
winklebeck@hotmail.com

From mleeper at optonline.net  Tue Dec  8 14:11:10 2009
From: mleeper at optonline.net (Mark R. Leeper)
Date: Tue Dec  8 14:11:12 2009
Subject: Review: The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009)
Message-ID: <op.u3703igoy83cp7@mail-hub.optonline.net>

                    THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS
                (a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

     CAPSULE: This is the most bizarre look at how mad the
     military can be since CATCH 22.  The United States
     military maintains a core of people who claim to have
     psychic powers.  The trappings are fun: men who can
     run through walls, stare goats to death, and can give
     deadly forehead taps.  But there is not much plot or
     story here to hang them on.  Through the whole film
     one has the feeling that the real story is just about
     to begin, but like the original military project, we
     go nowhere and nothing ever comes of anything.  Rating:
     high +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10

"More of this is true than you would believe."  This is the
statement that starts the film.  Perhaps it is true, and it might
not take a lot to convince me.  Back when I was working for a major
telecommunications corporation the management invested heavily in
pseudo-scientific pop-psychology exercises and the medical
department touted the value of magnetic bracelets.  The moral is
that people in positions of responsibility are easily fooled by
others and by themselves.

There was a time that both the Americans and the Soviets believed
that there might actually be some truth to psychic claims and both
sides did what in retrospect were absurd experiments in
parapsychology.  Perhaps to some degree it made sense.  There may
be a very low probability that anybody could prove and exploit
mystic powers, but if there was truth to the claims neither side
could afford to allow the other to gain a large psychic advantage.
THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS is a fiction film based on the
supposedly non-fiction book of the same title by Jon Ronson.  It is
about the bizarre cadre of men who claimed to have psychic powers
who were paid by the government to see if they could find a
strategic use of these mystical powers.

Bob Wilton (played by Ewan McGregor) is a Michigan newspaperman
sent to interview a local man who claims to have the power to kill
hamsters by just staring at them.  He claims to have used this
power in the military and to have known a very gifted psychic at
that time.  That was Lyn Cassady.  Later Wilton coincidentally
meets Cassady (George Clooney, looking like J. Jonah Jameson from
SPIDER-MAN) and travels with him to Iraq to see him use his claimed
powers.  The story follows their current adventures in Iraq and in
flashback tell Cassady's story in the experimental "New Earth
Army."  This elite group, led by the Timothy Leary wannabe Bill
Django (Jeff Bridges) who trains his people to read minds, pass
through solid walls, and to kill with a stare or a tap on the
forehead.  Meanwhile another bizarre psychic, Larry Hooper (Kevin
Spacey), tries to use the situation for his own advancement.

The problem with Peter Straughan's adaptation of the book by Jon
Ronson is that in spite of its shocking view, and its eccentric
characters and situations, the promised story never forms itself.
The viewer (and the main character) just spends some time among
some strange people.  We see a few short segments that tell some of
what happens in the training, but it is all kept at arm's distance.
Rather than moving toward any sort of conclusion about all that has
happened, the film builds to an uninteresting episode of group LSD
in the Iraqi desert and then suddenly the film is over.

This film could have been a very sharp attack on the credulity of
the leaders of the United States military, a sort of latter-day DR.
STRANGELOVE.  But it ends up squishy-soft and undirected.  Where it
should be saying this was a waste of taxpayer money, THE MEN WHO
STARE AT GOATS just says that there are some real wackos in the
world.  But you probably knew that already.  I rate it a high +1 on
the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10.

Film Credits: <http://us.imdb.com/title/tt1234548>

What others are saying:
<http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/men_who_stare_at_goats/>

					Mark R. Leeper
					mleeper@optonline.net
					Copyright 2009 Mark R. Leeper

From mleeper at optonline.net  Tue Dec  8 14:12:37 2009
From: mleeper at optonline.net (Mark R. Leeper)
Date: Tue Dec  8 14:12:39 2009
Subject: Review: The Second Best Science Fiction Movie Ever Made (2009)
Message-ID: <op.u37zynqny83cp7@mail-hub.optonline.net>

           THE SECOND BEST SCIENCE FICTION MOVIE EVER MADE
                (a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

     CAPSULE: This ultra-low budget attempt at a science
     fiction film is lacking in just about every aspect.
     Humans kidnapped by aliens and turned into super-being
     by aliens return to Earth to battle for control of the
     alien world.  What sounds like the premise of an "Outer
     Limits" episode never engages the viewer.  Mysterious
     film is probably a first time effort by David M. Epstein.
     It mostly just seems to be people running around and
     fighting (not very convincingly).  By the time there
     is any character development, the viewer probably no
     longer cares.  Rating: -1 (-4 to +4) or 3/10

Even as I am reviewing THE SECOND BEST SCIENCE FICTION MOVIE EVER
MADE I cannot say very much about the origins of this film or the
person behind it.  As of this writing it is not listed in the
Internet Movie Database or any of the standard movie review sites.
The film has a website, http://www.secondbestscifimovie.com.  But
even that website is surprisingly uninformative.  The film was
written, produced, and directed by David Michael Epstein for the
film company David Michael Epstein.  It will be released directly
to video on January 5, 2010, and it was a selection for the Long
Island Film Festival.  But a web search turns up nothing about
Epstein even in conjunction with the film festival.  Even a Google
search does not find any Internet references to the film.

The premise is convoluted.  At some time several years ago eight
astronauts disappeared.  It seems they had been kidnapped by aliens
and taken to the aliens' home planet.  They found it a paradise,
but breathing the atmosphere had a very bad effect on their
thinking processes.  The astronauts formed two conflicting camps,
four humans each, bringing war to the alien world.  The astronauts
have been sent back to Earth, taking their quarrel back to their
home planet.  They have two hours to war with each other, and
whoever wins will also be the lords of the alien world.  This is
all revealed in one large expository lump at the beginning of the
story.  They will fight it out with new super-powers but only
minimal special effects.  One, for example, has "unremitting
musculoskeletal activity in legs."  Presumably that means that he
is compelled to run without stopping.  Most of the astronauts look
human, but one has an oversize head that looks like a fugitive from
a Marti Gras parade.

There are a lot of good films by one auteur who wrote and directed
(and usually produced).  Certainly in these days of video,
production costs are not high and there are a lot of amateur films
being made.  I was however intrigued by the title of the film and
so decided to give it a try.  In some ways the circumstances were a
lot like those for another film by a first timer who wrote,
produced, and directed.  That film was the aptly-titled BAD TASTE
(1987) created by Peter Jackson.  I would not have expected great
things from this Peter Jackson after seeing that first film.
Similarly David Michael Epstein is starting with a somewhat less
than auspicious attempt.  This is a film that seems to be mostly
about people running around a suburban neighborhood.  It has a few
very simple computer special effects, but nothing that makes the
visuals of interest.

This mystery film appears to be a practice effort for a fledgling
filmmaker.  It cannot be recommended, but it does have a moment or
two here and there.  I rate the inaccurately titled THE SECOND BEST
SCIENCE FICTION MOVIE EVER MADE a -1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 3/10.


					Mark R. Leeper
					mleeper@optonline.net
					Copyright 2009 Mark R. Leeper

From tskirvin at killfile.org  Thu Dec 10 02:46:13 2009
From: tskirvin at killfile.org (Tim Skirvin)
Date: Thu Dec 10 02:46:16 2009
Subject: Review: The Men Who Stare At Goats (2009)
Message-ID: <tskirvin.20091210074431$6db0@vulture.killfile.org>

  When Jon Ronson, the author of the book version of _The Men Who
Stare At Goats_ appeared on _The Daily Show_ a few months back, he amused
me with his story: a (non-fiction) look at the US Military's attempts to
harness psychic and new-agey techniques for combat purposes.  He came in
primarily to talk about the book, but it was in relation to the upcoming
movie version; and at the very least, I was intrigued.  But when the time
came to see the movie, I was a little bit less enthused; after all, the
movie is "inspired by" the book, not "based on".  This concept has worried
me every time that I've run across it - think _I, Robot_, which proves my
point quite well, or _Starship Troopers_, which at least shows that it
doesn't always end badly.  Regardless, I went into the movie without reading
the book, but open to the idea that there was something fun there.

  Well...  there were some good parts.

  The movie turns out to be an absurd comedy, trying to show off the
silliness of a bunch of military-types taking themselves seriously while
find their chakras and (yes) kill goats with their minds.  There is a story
behind it, but it's hardly relevant to the situation and its associated
comedy, and more often than not it gets left behind so the main characters
can tell lengthy stories, detailing sections of the history of the project.
Most of the laughter comes from this (maddeningly divided) history; and
honestly, those stories were told better in front of Jon Stewart.

  The most *clever* joke of the movie is based around the casting.
The soldiers trained in psychic warfare are referred to as "Jedi", and one
of the two stars of the movie is Ewan McGregor.  This made me laugh, at
least, even if most of the rest didn't...

  Don't get me wrong, I didn't hate this movie.  I was just
disappointed.  Before the movie began, there was a commercial for Levi's
Jeans.  This isn't unusual.  What is unusual is that a) the commercial
involved a shot of Multnomah Falls, and b) I had been there about 45
minutes before the movie began.  Sadly, this amused me more than the movie
itself.

  **

                           - Tim Skirvin (tskirvin@killfile.org)
-- 
http://wiki.killfile.org/           Skirv's Homepage <FISH>< <*>
http://wiki.killfile.org/reviews/movies    Skirv's Movie Reviews

From tskirvin at killfile.org  Thu Dec 10 03:33:05 2009
From: tskirvin at killfile.org (Tim Skirvin)
Date: Thu Dec 10 03:33:07 2009
Subject: Review: A Serious Man (2009)
Message-ID: <tskirvin.20091210083123$142b@vulture.killfile.org>

  For the first time in my movie-reviewing career, I feel like I'm in
over my head.  As I came out of _A Serious Man_, I felt like I had been to
an art gallery.  I had seen many things, and while I recognize that I had
liked those things, I had no idea *why* I liked them.  Worse, I didn't like
*all* of those things, at least not as much as I felt like I ought to have!
In the past, I've been able to paper over this response by, well, not
writing anything.  Now that I'm writing reviews, I have to display that lack
of sophistication to the world.

  Well, here goes.

  _A Serious Man_ tells two stories: a prologue, regarding an 18th
century Russian Jewish couple and a visitor to their house, and the main
story, telling of the trials a Jewish professor in the late 1960s.  The
first part sets the tone: dark.  The second part adds absurd despair, mixed
liberally with a black humor and topped off with a dollop of pathos.
Together, the Coen brothers end up with something painful, profound, and
pitch-black humor.

  The cinematography is spectacular, especially considering the
relatively mundane setting.  The soundtrack - mostly lots of Jefferson
Airplane - was well-used and thought out.  The characters were well-realized
and, though perhaps somewhat stereotypical, quite authentic.  The community
seemed both large and manageable; everybody had a challenge, and they
responded to those challenges in ways both reasonable and absurd.  The
acting was excellent (and full of unknown actors - always a plus!).  And I
think I even picked up a few pieces of Jewish culture along the way.

  But the problem, from my point of view, is that this was also an
Art Film, in the most dangerous manner.  Coming out of the theatre, I could
not identify how the elements of the prologue presaged what came later.  I
had laughed in many places where the rest of the audience had not, but I
couldn't tell if this was my own dark sense of humor or me just
understanding the difficult humor.  In general, while I didn't exactly feel
like I was lost during the film, I also didn't feel like I understood it
all.  I came out of this movie wondering if, perhaps, I should take some
film-studies classes.  Perhaps that sums the movie up as well as anything.

  Don't go in expecting a straight-forward Coen brothers comedy; this
ain't it.  _Burn After Reading_, _The Big Lebowski_, _The Hudsucker Proxy_,
are all much more "comedic" comedies; even _Fargo_ doesn't hold a candle to
the darkness of this movie.  Perhaps this is some kind of cross between the
darkness of _No Country for Old Men_ and the comedy of _Fargo_; I'm not
sure if I can think of anything else comparable.  But still, it's worth
seeing if you recognized any of the movies I just listed (and if you're
reading my reviews, you probably do.)

  ***.  It probably would have been higher if I had understood; and,
perhaps my estimation of the movie will go up as I allow myself to read the
reviews of others.

                           - Tim Skirvin (tskirvin@killfile.org)
-- 
http://wiki.killfile.org/           Skirv's Homepage <FISH>< <*>
http://wiki.killfile.org/reviews/movies    Skirv's Movie Reviews

From homeryen88 at gmail.com  Fri Dec 11 14:16:50 2009
From: homeryen88 at gmail.com (Homer Yen)
Date: Fri Dec 11 14:16:53 2009
Subject: Review: 2012 (2009)
Message-ID: <4a52a9000912092156td34ba35uefa98abc5fd3079f@mail.gmail.com>

"2012" - Disaster Packaged Nicely
by Homer Yen
(c) 2009

If it's Director Ronald Emmerich, then it's the end of the world as we
know it.  This is the man who brought moviegoers apocalyptic popcorn
fare such as "Independence Day" and "The Day After".  I did very much
like "Independence Day" because unified patriotism never seemed more
gallant.  And, at least in "The Day After", there was a father's love
that ran deep.  "2012" made me think that no one was really worth
saving.  That must have been ok with the Director, though.  In an
interview by USA Today, Roland Emmerich stated that this will be his
final disaster film: "I said to myself that I'll do one more disaster
movie, but it has to end all disaster movies. So I packed everything
in."

Look for the hints of soon-to-come global destruction.  There are the
ominous warnings from scientists.  Government leaders have that wildly
concerned look.  We hear that eerie music that foretells of bad things
to come.  We've seen this set up so many times (and to be fair, there
really isn't any other way to do it), but it would've been novel if
pop-up thought bubbles appeared to alert viewers like in the VH1 music
video show.

The list of how the Earth gets pummeled is long indeed.  It starts
with some astrophysical phenomena that alarmingly raises the number of
neutrinos that are hitting the Earth.  Then, the core of the planet
begins to heat up, which will cause massive tectonic shifts and decay
of the Earth's crust.  On a more personally devastating scale,
earthquakes and tsunamis and volcanic eruptions and just about
anything else other than the moon colliding with the Earth happens.

The impending doom is known by only a select few in the government.
They furiously orchestrate a plan to save humanity.  But at what cost?
 We have a chance to inject a lesson on morality here or to give some
insight into the marvels of engineering.  But the film treats these
potential threads as just throwaway ideas.  Instead, it focuses on a
dysfunctional family, with irresponsible dad, Jackson Curtis (John
Cusack); estranged wife, Kate (Amanda Peete); and their two kids who
have this constant look on their faces as if they are about to go to
the dentist.  As far as the
family-hoping-to-survive-amid-global-disaster lot goes, the script
that these people have is so predictable that you can almost tell what
they are going to say before they say it.

The film experience is really a mixed bag.  And, I think that the film
could have been great if it was like a stoner comedy or a buddy film.
In fact, early on, there is an extremely entertaining over-the-top
sequence as a massive earthquake hits.  Jackson and his family try to
race out of their neighborhood.  They have to outrun all sorts of
obstacles as they make their way to the airport, including
disintegrating roads and toppling highways.  Once they miraculously
make it and they board a plane, it gets as good as one of those
Universal Studio rides in Florida.  If we only could've added some
moving seats, strobe lights, and 3D glasses!  When you have these
thrills and bizarre characters like the conspiracy-reporter (Woody
Harrelson), "2012" is nothing short of campy fun!  It's certainly not
a great film.  But it gives you what you expect.

Grade: B-

S:	1 out of 3
L:	1 out of 3
V:	1 out of 3

From winklebeck at hotmail.com  Fri Dec 11 16:39:39 2009
From: winklebeck at hotmail.com (Tim Voon)
Date: Fri Dec 11 16:39:41 2009
Subject: Review: Land of the Lost 2009
Message-ID: <2a345523-6de1-4e1d-b4cd-80dccf27a956@m7g2000prd.googlegroups.com>

Film Review - Land of the Lost 2009
By Tim Voon
0 out of 5 stars

I'm not sure where to begin with this movie. Frankly, I'm almost at a
loss for words after viewing LAND OF THE LOST 2009 and being bombarded
with images of one of the silliest attempts at movie humour to hit our
screen.

I should have seen this coming, after all it stars Will Ferrel, but
even this is considered pretty low in the long list of silly movies to
emerge from his neck of the woods. I should have known better then to
have clicked that box asking Qickflix, my online DVD store, to mail it
to me. I should have stopped watching when I saw the ape man dressed
in the guerrilla suit start hugging Will's legs and fondling his
crotch .... but I kept watching, sigh.

When I heard that a movie called LAND OF THE LOST was being made, I
had hoped that it would carry the same style of adventure that the
1974 Television series portrayed. It had a kind of Jurassic Park/
Indiana Jones feel about it. When I heard that it was being carried by
Will Ferrel, my heart dropped and missed a beat.

In short, Will Ferrel is Dr. Rick Marshall a scientist who believes
that Tachyon beams can in fact allow a person to travel through time,
space and into alternate realities. His theories are rejected by his
scientific peers and Matt Lauer, until on an expedition with his two
companions ends up over a waterfall and into the prehistoric alt
universe. How this occurs, is never fully explained. At this point,
the movie slides down into a pool of sillier and sillier happenings.
His travelling group befriend an Ape Man called Chaka (Jorma Taccone)
who is literally dressed in a monkey suit and mask that I could have
rented from a costume party shop. They are then attacked by green
aliens and a sinister head alien who wants to steal Dr Marshall's
tachyon technology to do great evil. At this point in time, I am
screaming how do movies like this even get the funding to be made ....
oh, it stars Will Ferrel.

A big part of the problem with this movie is how amateurish it looks.
It is as if the Production team really didn't go to a lot of trouble
in making the settings of the alternate universe believable. A good
example is Chaka but a better example are the aliens - they are
dressed in green suits that my grandmother could have made on her
sewing machine, big bulgy shiny eyes and some sharp teeth ... and that
is meant to like scare us silly with laughter? The T Rex is of course
computer generated but it would probably be more on par with a BBC
production of a dinosaur documentary than what would expect from a
multi-million dollar Hollywood production.

The movie moment that I most remember and probably would most like to
forget, is when Will Ferrel discovers a way to return to our universe.
However, standing in his way is the T-Rex who has been hounding to eat
him the whole movie. With his eyes opened wide he pole vaults straight
into the T-Rex mouth and belly, this is followed by his girlfriend
(Anna Friel) telling the T-Rex off for eating the only person who
cared about him (this is in reference to the fact that Dr Marshall
believe that T-Rex's were actually very intelligent beings). In a
moment of rage she rips of her belt and starts whipping the green
aliens who retaliate and capture her. The other travelling companion
(Will Stanton) comes to her aid by grabbing Chaka the ape man as a
weapon in a vain effort to ram the green aliens. They are easily
subdued and about to be eaten when Will Ferrel emerges triumphant on
top of the T-Rex who swallowed him earlier, in order to save the
day!!!!!

I guess I expected a more serious, adventure style plot with doses of
good humour with this movie, I just wasn't expecting the ridiculous.





Website - filmnet.com
Email - winklebeck @hotmail.com

From doc.martian at gmail.com  Fri Dec 11 16:40:34 2009
From: doc.martian at gmail.com (Dr. Phineas J. Martian)
Date: Fri Dec 11 16:40:36 2009
Subject: Review: Shogun Assassin - 5-Film Collector's Set
Message-ID: <b886ef73-118c-48d5-bc2c-ca4b53945112@x6g2000prc.googlegroups.com>

Step by step, inch by inch

Shogun Assassin - 5-Film Collector's Set by Animeigo
www.animeigo.com

Alright, let me get the hard part out of the way. There's only one
thing I DON'T like about this box set. The commentary on Shogun
Assassin. Nonstop barrage of data that'd be way better as a second
accompanying booklet leaving room for discussion on elements like the
ghosted images that float during a multi-ninja attack and where they
came from, or whether the female ninja leader would be able to run
backwards disappearing into the distance if she HADN'T jumped out of
her kimono. I guess what I'm saying is I prefer the pop-up video style
of commentary that riffs on the film than endless streams of data,
even if the data is erudite and well-researched.

OK, hard part's over, now the fun begins. WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! 5 Films
dubbed into English (one of which is a well-edited pastiche of two
films) from the Lone Wolf and Cub movies (themselves based on a manga
by the writer Kazuo Koike and the artist Goseki Kojima) released in
1972-74. Now 1972 was a strange time in filmmaking... most of the
taboos of filmmaking that had built up since the first gasp of
censorship in the 1930s had been broken in the late 1960s, in token
forms, and in the early 70s, the gore, the sex, the language, the
violence and the adult situations were being utilized not only by the
grindhouse and exploitation companies but by the major studios as
well... which gave more leeway to artists to incorporate these
elements into their work. This resulted in films like Fritz the Cat,
The Last House on the Left, Last Tango in Paris, Deep Throat, Aguirre,
the Wrath of God, and Pink Flamingos arriving on the scene in the
Western markets. Similarly, 1972 saw Hanzo the Razor, Female Prisoner
#701 Scorpion and the Sword of Vengeance/Lone Wolf & Cub/Baby Cart
movies appear pushing the limits of what Japanese cinema consisted of
during that period (after all... how many Kurosawa clones can one
endure before committing ritual suicide).

Although these films were visually exciting and brash by any critical
standards, they didn't translate well to U.S. markets and were a long
cross-country journey away from European markets. That doesn't mean
they completely languished on the shelves, there were some subtitled
releases of the Lone Wolf & Cub series, but they usually didn't make
it out of Chinatown... even though there was an interest in martial
arts films with the success of Bruce Lee, the television show Kung Fu
and Sonny Chiba's The Street Fighter.

In 1980. Ka-BOOM! Big Dubbed Cinema with Synthesizer Massacre
Slaughterama 9000 with eerie little kid voice-over
ATTAAAAAAAAACCCKKKKKKK! The second Lone Wolf & Cub film's (along with
a 12 minute backstory from the first film) rights were purchased by
Robert Houston (Bobby from Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes) and David
Weisman (Andy Warhol associate and director of Edie Sedgewick in Ciao!
Manhattan). Dubbing was done based on hypothetical scripts by deaf
lipreaders with voice talent that featured Lamont Johnson, Sandra
Bernhard (pre-fame), Marshall Efron and six-year old Gibran Evans (son
of the film's promotional artist Jim Evans) providing a spooky voice-
over and the voice of Daigoro (the Cub). All this is supplanted by a
riveting score performed and co-written by Mark Lindsay, former
vocalist of Paul Revere and the Raiders. The slow plodding of Ogami
Itto toward his inexorable revenge upon the Shogun/Leader of the Yagyu
Shadow Clan begins beneath the haunting score and the unearthly voice-
over of his son Daigoro.

Part I
Shogun Assassin

When I was little, my father was famous. He was the greatest Samurai
in the empire, and he was the Shogun's decapitator.

You probably first heard that at the same time I did, as the bedtime
movie of B.B. in Quentin Tarantino's 'Kill Bill', I'm not saying that
you didn't hear it earlier (you crusty old fuck) but chances are, you
heard it there first. Me? I figured it was anime, and in a way, it is,
being a depiction of a manga, but the cinematic artistry of Kenji
Misumi (director of Baby Cart 1, 2, 3 & 5) surpasses the simplicity of
design in most animated features with a simple iconography. Lone Wolf
haggard and worn after the death of his wife. The baby cart loaded
with weapons, the flashing sword, the blood, the split crazy fiber
baskets on the heads of the Yagyu Shadow Clan soldiers, the road,
inns, temples (where Ogami Itto meets his clients for assassination
jobs) the home of a daimyo where blood is always shed by the visitors
who arrive and nature. All of these themes repeat throughout the film
series, the editing in the first film of the series is slightly
sensationalistic however. Not that that leaves anything to be desired
in my book, I like my films visceral with entrails strewn everywhere,
but perhaps some of you would prefer to pick up the original films
(also marketed by Animeigo as the 'Lone Wolf and Cub' series) with
subtitles. Well you just go ahead you pretentious frauds! Argghhh
Slash Massacree if it moves, kill it muhahahaahahahahahaahahahahahah.
This here film a slaughterfest of epic proportions. When things aren't
getting cut by swords and daggers and blades concealed in Daigoro's
babycart, it setting things up so that MORE things can be cut by
swords and daggers and blades concealed in Daigoro's babycart.
Thumping great soundtrack splatter splatter splatter ka-blash ka-blash
ka-blash slice followed by the plod plod plod of Tomisaburo Wakayama's
Ogami Itto as he staggers along pushing the cart to the next
slaughterfest. BUY THIS FILM! BUY MULTIPLE COPIES! SO WHAT IF YOU
DON'T HAVE FOOD MONEY THAT MONTH! FEAST ON THE PAIN AND SPLATTERED
CONDOMS FILLED WITH BLOOD AIYEEEEEE!

Part II
Shogun Assassin II: Lightning Swords of Death

After the storm comes a calm, but in this case, it is merely the eye
of the hurricane. The film known as Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to
Hades has been dubbed (without a score by Mark Lindsay {SOB!}) by a
new set of voice artists and team of translators. I'm the first to
admit it doesn't pack the punch of the first film in the series. Like
the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail however, Once your
arm has been cut off, the rest hardly matters, you're beaten no matter
how many times you re-iterate your ability to still fight. Just sit
back and let the anticipation and joy as Itto continues on his
assassin's road fill your soul. Edo Period Japan, in all its finery is
again the backdrop for the adventures of the Lone Wolf and Cub.

Strangely, with less bloodshed, you are able to see how Ogami Itto is
less characteristic of a Samurai with the Bushido code largely related
to his relationship to his lord or a Ronin protecting his own
interests as he is representative of a feudal saga-like Knight Errant.
He protects the weak, avenges wrongs, cultivates renown, and acts like
frickin' Lancelot more than Miyamoto Musashi. My theory for this is
that these stories take place in late-era Edo (as evidenced by the
revolvers) where Western culture has crept into Japanese culture
surreptitiously at a psychic level. I picture Queen Victoria
fascinated by intelligence reports of a Shogun's deposed executioner
walking the earth and meting out justice and defending himself against
the vengeance of the usurper of his position, or maybe he has been
taken under the psychic wing of a Westerner he encountered at court
before being deposed by inciting the Shogun (now distinguished as
separate from the Yagyu Shadow-clan leader Retsudo). This film does a
lot to establish Ogami Itto's strength of character and distinguish
him from just another killer in the hire of officialdom. He is outcast
and even finds himself tortured by buri-buri whipping torture (long
story how he gets there, watch the movie you dope!) where guys with
canes spin him on a rope, beating him and shouting buri-buri at him
repeatedly. buri-buri! buri-buri! buri-buri! buri-buri! buri-buri!
buri-buri! I'm getting dizzy. MUST KILL MANY SAMURAI NAOW!!!!!! PLOD!
PLOD! PLOD! Not to spoil... but he gets his chance... he guns down
dozens of his target's mercenary samurai with a cannonade from the
baby cart and chops down the rest with his sword! What this film lacks
in its less sensational aspects and more naturalistic scoring, it
makes up for by giving Ogami Itto a heart. He's not just a murder
machine, he's a murder machine with a heart of gold as well as a
priest of the warrior code! buri-buri! buri-buri! buri-buri! buri-
buri! (sorry, couldn't resist doing that again!)

Part III
Shogun Assassin III: Slashing Blades of Carnage

NAKED TATTOO CHICK WITH A WAKIZASHI TAKING THE TOPKNOTS OF HER FRESH
KILLS! OMGOMGOMGOMG! I'm such a fucking fanboi when it comes to
merciless women! This film returns to the storm. Mayhem, Slaughter,
HYPNOSIS AND FIRE MAGICK FROM A BLAZING KATANA! The only Japanese
cinematic elements I find MORE entertaining are GIANT RUBBER SNAKES
ATTACKING KOFUN PERIOD PRINCESSES AND THEIR SERVANTS! I digress
however.

This film begins to explore the character of Daigoro. While he is
demonstrated as capable and even skillful and insightful before, here
he shows cunning, determination and knowledge of weapons when
confronted by an opponent. There also returns the antagonist of the
series, Yagyu Retsudo as he demonstrates the origin of the cliche 'Its
all fun and games until the leader of the shadow-clan loses an eye'.

The naturalistic soundtrack and character development continue, but
the 3rd film in the Shogun Assassin series (4th film in the Lone Wolf
& Cub series) is more action-packed than its immediate predecessor,
this as well as the addition of an often topless anti-heroine should
keep the interest of those with shorter attention spans and less
interest in Edo-period Japanese cultural practices, I mean I love a
good historical novel/film but man do I love seeing dozens of
combatants sliced into ribbons in the methodical pursuit of vengeance
against a foe who has used guile to cast down a hero from his happy
place!

Part IV
Shogun Assassin IV: Five Fistfuls of Gold

This film REEKS of spaghetti western. Ogami Itto meets his most
challenging adversary, Barney the Giant Purple Dinosaur, oh wait,
that's Shogun Assassin VI: Five Fistfuls of Giant Purple Dinosaur
Guts! Ogami's adversary HERE is an Abbot who convinces him that to
fulfill the contract upon him will leave the Lone Wolf spiritually
bankrupt, Ogami buys it for a time, but upon seeing his son tortured
for a crime he did not commit while upholding a promise to a mere
stranger (a pickpocket caught flatfooted when her accomplice goes off
to take a leak), he realizes that the fulfillment of his assassin's
contract upon the Abbot (a contract delivered by 5 sword-slingin'
Nippon cowboys who provide bits of data on the contract as Ogami sends
them swiftly to meet the Lord Buddha) has merit. Yagyu Retsudo makes
an appearance in this film as well, primarily to spur the audience
into not forgetting him for the climactic final battle in the 5th
Shogun Assassin film, but also to illustrate clan warfare and the role
of intelligence data in struggles between clans. The data here is
substituted by Lone Wolf leaving Retsudo gnashing his teeth, tearing
out his hair and vowing eternal vengeance. Highlights include masked
warriors, slaughter of daimyo families and ritual decapitation as
their servants show diligence in performing their duties in spite of
the cowardice of their leaders.


Part V
Shogun Assassin V: Cold Road to Hell

This film feels the most episodic of the adaptations of the manga
series. The two key vignettes united by a unifying narrative strand.
The primary strand is that of Yagyu Retsudo being pressured by the
Shogun to put an end to Ogami Itto or be put in a position where his
clan loses face by requiring other clans to declare the Lone Wolf an
outlaw. To first accomplish this, Retsudo sends his only remaining
legitimate offspring, a dagger-juggling gal who quickly gets slice-n-
diced by Ogami. This pressures Retsudo to call upon a hidden
resources, the dark hill-dwelling clan bastard son who has disowned
him and learned dark magic physical disciplines to drive Itto from
society by killing all he comes in contact with. For once, the
unflappable Ogami Itto appears frazzled. However when presented with
an opportunity to duel, that's all she wrote for Yagyu Hyouei who
mortally wounded leaves combat to impregnate his illegitimate sister.
I mean that's just all a shadow-clan leader can take. Retsudo stabs
them both and leads an army to take out the former shogun executioner
himself. But not before utilizing the services of 3 hill-clan zombies
who crawl through dirt and snow only to get soundly butchered by Ogami
Itto (they interrupted his dinner). So Retsudo is left with his army,
and what an army, over 100 strong. He surrounds Ogami in the snow
leading to a gunbattlin' bob-sleddin' climax to the series. This
results in the largest single person on-screen body count in movie
history. 150 dead samurai. Retsudo flees muttering vague threats and
promises. Shades of SPECTRE or Dr. Claw or Darth Vader or any movie
serial villain you can think of. Meanwhile, Ogami Itto is momentarily
free and has soundly tromped his enemy a second time. Lone Wolf and
Cub are safe to be made into a television series.

Part VI
Slowly I turned...

OK. The first movie is the undeniable gem of this batch. True movie
magic. Beauty mixed with epic cheesiness. However, if you have any
interest in Japanese Cinema or hard-boiled action films or bloody
mayhem and martial arts gore, you aren't going to be satisfied until
you've seen them all. 1 is the Wasabi. 2, 3 & 4 are the Sushi with a
variety of flavors but with plenty of body to fill you as a meal so
that you aren't just telling people you saw these movies where
3734780283402384083048390840 guys got decapitated, and 5 is the sweet
ginger palate cleanser that leaves you walking away from the film
series feeling satisfied and cleansed by a massive massacre in the
snow as well as a crazy dueling babycart (yes Retsudo has a babycart
too!) scene. All together? 5 stars, not that you won't have moments
that are less than riveting, but taken as a slowly digested whole.
MAXIMUM ENTERTAINMENT.

http://docmartian.blogspot.com/2009/08/step-by-step-inch-by-inch.html

From winklebeck at hotmail.com  Fri Dec 11 16:41:24 2009
From: winklebeck at hotmail.com (Tim Voon)
Date: Fri Dec 11 16:41:27 2009
Subject: Review: Four Christmases 2008
Message-ID: <7274f0d4-56cb-4db2-bc99-ff5aa592828e@f18g2000prf.googlegroups.com>

Four Christmases 2008
A Review by Tim Voon
2 out of 5 stars

Christmas draws nigh again and on its tail is a trail of Hollywood
movie offerings released to lighten the pockets of holiday viewers. I
missed the release of FOUR CHRISTMASES last year, but it has arrived
on DVD this year on Santa's sleigh.

For some reason a lot of Christmas movies feature dysfunctional people
in dysfunctional families, and somehow humour is derived from their
misfortune i.e. CHRISTMAS WITH THE CRANKS, DECK THE HALLS, SANTA
CLAUS. Four Christmases is no different, it just has bigger name stars
than in the other movies.

The premise of the story is that Brad (Vince Vaughn) and Kate (Reese
Witherspoon) are a happily, unmarried couple with no plans to marry or
have children. They both like to go away for the Christmas holidays
and avoid family gatherings because of their own personal family
issues and problems. They will usually make some excuse that they are
performing some humanitarian work so as to avoid the holiday season
with their relations, and scoot of to some exotic sunny location to
laze in the Sun. That is until their plane flight to Fiji is cancelled
by bad weather and they are caught red handed on news lying about
their holiday plans. Therefore, they have to make an effort to visit
their disgruntled relations.

I can actually understand a situation like this, as some of us do have
relatives we wished live on a different planet. However, this movie
goes out of its way to make them as strange and outlandish as possible
- in order to draw humour from the quirky situations that arise. Brad
has pro-wrestling brothers who like to sit on and mangle him, his
mother (Sissy Spacek) is married to his college beast friend. Kate's
mother and sister are religious fanatics. The mother is sexually
interested in the church pastor and her father has a live in
girlfriend. Of course the parents are all divorced - therefore, the
title FOUR CHRISTMASES.

Maybe, families as unusual as this do exist. After all most of us have
skeletons in our family closet that we probably don't want the world
to know about. In this case, Brad and Kate realise that their perfect
life is not so perfect when it comes to their families. And that they
don't really know each other as well as they had believed - and the
skeletons come tumbling out of the stockings.

I did laugh in some hilarious scenes like when the installation of a
radar dish goes wrong and the TV set goes up in flames and when Reese
is trying to chase after her pregnancy test kit in a jumping castle
filled with kids. However, a lot of the humour is contrived and the
situations created are forced. I sensed as if the actors (Reese and
Vince) were trying very hard to be funny in many of the scenes, when
the best comedies come naturally with little effort from the actors.
This is a good try at Christmas humour but somehow it is lacking true
mirth and good cheer.

www.filmnet.com
winklebeck@iprimus.com.au

From tskirvin at killfile.org  Tue Dec 15 02:50:01 2009
From: tskirvin at killfile.org (Tim Skirvin)
Date: Tue Dec 15 02:50:04 2009
Subject: Review: Ninja Assassin (2009)
Message-ID: <tskirvin.20091215074812$3537@vulture.killfile.org>

  Seeing movies on Sunday nights is generally a solitary thing.  Sure,
there's a few people in the audience with me, others that were looking to
kill some downtime and see a movie without a huge crowd.  This takes
something away from comedies, as hearing when the rest of the world laughs
is often as fun as the movie.  But for action movies, dramas, and so forth,
it's generally ideal.  But every now and then, I run into an outlier, where
*more* people show up than usual.  I can never predict these times;
certainly, I never would have predicted that people would come out in
droves on a Sunday night to see a mediocre martial arts/ninja movie with an
exceptional amount of gore.

  I suppose that, by at least one measure, the movie fulfilled its
goal: there were, indeed, ninjas, and they did, indeed, assassinate.  In
fact, the opening scene not only offered us those two concepts, it did so
with style.  If the rest of the movie had been as well-made, I would have
been *very* happy; but there also wouldn't have been a plot, or characters,
or actors from _Coupling_.  And I suppose that would have been something of
a loss.

  Instead, we got a perplexing movie.  The action scenes were clearly
meant to be exciting set-pieces, and they were indeed pretty and exciting
to watch; but they were also difficult to actually understand, to the point
of incomprehensibility.  The background was supposed to be detailed and
tragic; but it turned out to be poorly balanced, with an odd combination of
too-dramatic and understated.  And the plot attempted to be both paper-thin
and over-wrought, but managed to be...  well, really not bad for something
like this.  When it comes down to it, I can't really tell how good of a film
the creators were aiming for.  And that's a bit weird.

  As for the movie itself...  well, I didn't hate it.  Rain did a fine
job in the lead role, I guess.  The archetypical fights were fun.  Those few
fights that actually involved person-on-person martial arts battles,
instead of just cutting people's heads off, were kindof interesting.  And
the training-to-be-a-ninja stuff was at least thought-provoking, even if it
wasn't in the way that the creators were pushing for.  

  But I still would have liked something that had been polished.  Give
the fighting scenes a purpose beyond arterial spray; give a reasonable
sense of scale of the ongoing war; revel more in the silly; and maybe all
of the ninja trainees should actually be doing the same testing.  Instead,
we came up with something adequate, but not very good.

  **

  One random note: JMS, the creator of Babylon 5 (my favorite TV
series), was the co-writer of this movie.  It did shine through, but perhaps
not in a great way.  If you've watched the show or read his comics, some of
the speeches will sound a little familiar.  *shrug* That's not really a big
problem, just worthy of observation.

                           - Tim Skirvin (tskirvin@killfile.org)
-- 
http://wiki.killfile.org/           Skirv's Homepage <FISH>< <*>
http://wiki.killfile.org/reviews/movies    Skirv's Movie Reviews

From tskirvin at killfile.org  Mon Dec 21 03:50:53 2009
From: tskirvin at killfile.org (Tim Skirvin)
Date: Mon Dec 21 03:50:56 2009
Subject: Review: Up in the Air (2009)
Message-ID: <tskirvin.20091221084908$68e6@vulture.killfile.org>

  Amongst the most awkward movie experiences of my life was when I
saw _High Fidelity_.  I went to the movie with a pair of friends, one of
which was an ex-girlfriend, bearing a Transformer I had just purchased
across the street at Meijer.  The movie was in large part about breakups,
seeing those ex-significant-others, and putting away childish things.  I had
clearly seen the movie in the most inadvertently appropriate manner
possible; and years later, I still feel both awkward and wistful as I think
about it.

  _Up in the Air_ is in large part about the loneliness of a crowd.  I
saw it alone, in a fairly packed theatre, surrounded by others that choose
to go to movies on a Sunday night.  And as I left the movie, I felt that I
had to take a walk around the neighborhood to contemplate the situation.
And I wonder if I'm going to be thinking seriously about this
otherwise-innocuous evening in nine years.

  From the trailers, I had originally pegged the movie as a romantic
comedy.  I suppose that it did, in some ways, fit that bill; but it was not
(as I feared) about the relationship between George Clooney and his 23-year
old assistant, but instead about the relationship between Clooney and his
job.  The main hook of the movie is this job: Clooney (Ryan) is a travelling
consultant who fires people for a living.  This, of course, resonates well
with the modern economy (which is why it's doing well at the box office);
but more interestingly, this makes it a bit of a period piece, as well as
movie about a specific *setting*, that being (for the most part) the
Midwestern and Plains States.  And while I'm not sure that just the
existence of Omaha was meant to make us laugh, I wasn't (quite) the only
one in the theatre to do so.

  But what we really get is a character piece.  Clooney has chosen to
live his life on the road; we spend the movie seeing both what this offers
him, and what he has to give up in order to maintain that life.  He has also
chosen a role in life that many would consider, at its heart, *evil*; and
of course we see what this costs him.  We see him respond to changes in his
life (outsourcing comes for all employees), and indeed to try to change his
life as well.  And we see him come back to the beginning, slightly changed.
The plot was, in many ways, incidental, at least for Clooney.

  Interestingly, the movie felt authentic to me.  The firings were,
indeed, brutal, without being over-the-top or evil.  The new young worker -
not an assistant at all, I might add, another place that I was misled by
the trailer - seemed both stereotypical and a lot like several
brilliant-but-unlucky women I've known in my life.  Speaking from someone
right in the middle of the generational gap presented, the arguments on
both sides were spot-on.  The wedding and its trappings were properly
excruciating for me, because of the sheer awkwardness of the situation for
the family.  And the airport scenes always *felt* like airport scenes, in a
way that invoked both just a touch of pity for having to be in the airport,
and jealousy for getting all of the perks that there were to be had.

  And you know what?  I liked the *actual* romance of the movie too.
It was sweet and modern and doomed and cute, as well as, somehow, kindof
natural.  I may not have liked where it ended (not an attack on Chicago,
mind), but I...  respected it.  Clooney got his comeuppance in a perfectly
natural, perfectly unfair way - just like all of the people that he had
fired throughout the movie.  It was just...  how things had to be.

  It's a strong movie, very well done.  I liked the direction, the
script, the acting, and the settings.  And I think that I'd have enjoyed it
just that little bit less if the theatre had been empty, or if I had had
somebody with me to hold hands with.  

  *** 1/2

                           - Tim Skirvin (tskirvin@killfile.org)
-- 
http://wiki.killfile.org/           Skirv's Homepage <FISH>< <*>
http://wiki.killfile.org/reviews/movies    Skirv's Movie Reviews

From winklebeck at hotmail.com  Mon Dec 21 13:59:02 2009
From: winklebeck at hotmail.com (Tim Voon)
Date: Mon Dec 21 13:59:05 2009
Subject: Review: The Secret Life of Bees (2008)
Message-ID: <75a5f5ab-3af6-42f1-bcb7-a5ed001b6616@r24g2000prf.googlegroups.com>

Film Review - The Secret Life of Bees 2008
By Tim Voon
3 out of 5 stars

THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES is based on a bestselling novel by Sue Monk
Kid. Like any novel of some given success it becomes a target for some
Hollywood executive in the hopes of being a lucrative endeavour. In
this case, I believe that one of the list of executive producers were
the Smiths (Jade and Will). It had moderate success at the US box
office and was only made with a budget of 11 million.

The line up of actors is impressive which includes some of the music
industry's finest female African American artists - Alicia Keys and
Jennifer Hudson who can both act well. Included is Dakota Fanning one
of the few child actors who have made a successful transition to
teenage actor and likely to adult actor as well. Queen Latifah wraps
up the final major cast member and she is always a delight to watch on
screen.

This movie is designed to be a major tear jerker from the horrific
opening scenes of domestic violence and death. Set in the 60's of
southern USA when racial violence and tension was still prevalent in
the south. It is during this period of time when a child Lily Owens
(Dakota Fanning) runs away from home with her house maid (Jennifer
Hudson). The tone of the escape could almost be described as
Huckleberry Finish with a twist of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Both are
fugitives, one is escaping her violent father (Paul Bettany) and the
other is escaping the law for being rude to a white man.

They find refuge with Bee Keeper/Honey Maker August Boatwright (Queen
Latifah) and her sisters (Alicia Keys and Sophie Okenedo). It is here
that the young girls find healing for their souls. Just as honey can
be used to nourish the soul and heal wounds. The company of the
Boatwright sisters act as balm for the spirits of the two escapees. It
is here that the movie overflows with sisterly bonding - girls playing
with each other's hair, squirting each other with water, making
cookies for each other, holding spiritual ceremonies and telling
stories about a black Madonna. I was sure that I was drowning in
treacle and molasses somewhere in the middle of the movie. This is not
necessarily a bad thing. It is after all catered for all the mothers,
daughters, aunts and grandmothers out there in the world who are
crying for some identity and recognition.

So the answer to the question lingering at the back of your mind is
this a chick flick? YES it is. However, it is one of the better ones
out there floating in the sea of Kleenex tissues and warm quilts. It
is the story about the empowerment of black women in a white man's
world, about self discovery, forgiveness and redemption. If this isn't
enough to bring a tear to your eye, then you may have a heart of
stone.

www.filmnet.com
winklebeck@hotmail.com

From winklebeck at hotmail.com  Mon Dec 21 14:04:50 2009
From: winklebeck at hotmail.com (Tim Voon)
Date: Mon Dec 21 14:04:53 2009
Subject: Review: Bruno (2009)
Message-ID: <b5494838-a21f-4d4b-8451-d256e14a640d@f20g2000prn.googlegroups.com>

Bruno 2009
A Review by Tim Voon
1 out of 5 stars

I watch the R rated version on DVD - the version that had been
prohibited in Australian cinemas. I wish I hadn't. I was flashed a
good 30 second screen shot of Sacha Baron Cohen's penis shouting
'Bruno' and I'm still recovering from the post traumatic stress of
that frightful vision.

The main problem with BRUNO is that this mockumentary isn't as
realistic or believable as BORAT. It doesn't even come close. I
couldn't believe in the persona of BRUNO, that this was a male model
from Austria trying to make it big in the Entertainment industry in
the US. Whilst I could believe in the persona of BORAT, a good will
ambassador from Kazakhstan who had come to learn the cultural ways of
the USA.

 A lot of the situations set up for this Austrian model entertainer
seem staged and artificial and are not particularly funny. However,
one has to give some kudos for Sacha Cohen for being able to
physically transform himself into a blonde, gay model - he is
virtually unrecognisable from his Ali G and Borat personas. I also
feel that Sacha Cohen tries overly hard in this movie to try to outdo
and out shock what he achieved with Borat. I found Borat genuinely
funny in some scenarios, exposing some great flaws in the Myth that
America is the greatest nation on earth. However, the scenarios in
BRUNO are just crude and shocking for the sake of being crude and
shocking. A good example is the flapping penis waving about the
screen, screaming 'Bruno'.

Other offensive scenes include a simulated gay sex leather scene where
he is leather bound to his Austrian lover and hopping around town.
Trying to sneak into the tents of male hunters in the middle of the
night was just creepy. Trying to learn martial arts from an expert in
order to defend against gay men was silly. Serving food on a fat naked
person whilst interviewing Paula Abdul and sitting on Mexican workers
was distasteful. Not even the sing a long at the end with Bono (U2)
and Elton John could save this movie. Personally, I felt that they
looked uncomfortable on screen chirping out the words of some bizarre
song.

My main gripe with BRUNO is that I just didn't find it funny at all.

www.filmnet.com
winklebeck@iprimus.com.au

From mleeper at optonline.net  Mon Dec 21 14:05:52 2009
From: mleeper at optonline.net (Mark R. Leeper)
Date: Mon Dec 21 14:05:54 2009
Subject: Review: Invictus (2009)
Message-ID: <op.u4vys3dby83cp7@mail-hub.optonline.net>

                               INVICTUS
                (a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

     CAPSULE: Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon star in Clint
     Eastwood's story of how Nelson Mandela used rugby
     football to unite a South Africa that some say was on
     the verge of civil war.  Mandela urges the captain of
     the national rugby team, the Springboks, to mold his
     team into one that can win the World Cup.  The story
     is just a little too straightforward and predictable
     with Eastwood apparently too anxious to concentrate on
     too much detail of the final game.  Anthony Peckham's
     screenplay, based on the book by John Carlin, tells its
     predictable story without putting too much spin on the
     ball.  But if the story is obvious, at least Eastwood
     makes it sufficiently rousing and at the same time a
     spiritual experience.  Some viewers may have problems
     understanding the South African accents.  Rating:
     high +2 (-4 to +4) or 8/10

In 1994 Nelson Mandela, formerly an anti-apartheid political
prisoner for 27 years, was elected President of South Africa.  Many
who supported apartheid believed that the country would fall apart
under the race hatred between the blacks and the whites.  Some even
wanted or expected civil war.  Mandela could have taken his
election as a mandate and implemented a policy that would have been
"winner-take-all".  Instead he wanted desperately to unite his
country.  He refused to oust whites from their offices and chose to
forget the past and continue the government in a spirit of
forgiveness and reconciliation.  It is not mentioned in the film
but Mandela made as his deputy Frederik Willem de Klerk, the former
President, and Mandela's one-time political enemy.

One of the symbols of apartheid was the entirely white (with one
exception) national rugby team, the Springboks.  In the earlier
days the whites of the country always rooted for the Springboks;
the blacks, including Mandela, always rooted against them.  His own
party supported disbanding the team, at this point a losing team
anyway.  Mandela saw he might be able to use the team to unite
blacks and whites.  He encouraged Francois Pienaar, the team
captain, to forge his team into a winning force that could take the
Rugby World Cup the following year.  INVICTUS is the story of
Mandela's political efforts to heal South Africa and of the team's
efforts to remold itself into a winning team.

There is no question at all where this film is going from the
beginning.  It is one of the most standard plots in film to show
why it is important for the team of losers to win and then have the
story build up to the "big game."  In this case it really happened
that way in real life.  In MILLION DOLLAR BABY Eastwood took a
standard sports plot and then did things entirely original with it.
And in that film the fight sequences were relatively brief.  Here
he does little that would surprise anyone with a passing knowledge
of Mandela's story.

Actually INVICTUS is two related films: one of Mandela's struggle
to unite his country and one of the team preparing for and playing
the World Cup game.  The sports story is strictly by the numbers,
building to an extended dramatization of the crucial game.  This is
a lot like any number of films about American football, but the
sport is rugby so there is a real surfeit of shots of players
piling up on each other with the camera filming their most
unflattering angle.  Pienaar (played by Matt Damon, who has the
build of an athlete and does a good South African accent) brings
little to the role that some deserving lesser-known South African
actor could not have.  Of course the real star is Morgan Freeman
who just occasionally sounds like he slips out of his affected
South African accent.  He looks the role and does a good job,
though probably not much of a stretch from his usual man-of-great-
dignity characters.

The film follows three or four mixed-race groups of people.  At the
beginning each still has the spirit of apartheid, but as the film
progresses they come closer together ignoring their racial
differences.  For example, we see Mandela's mixed-race team of
bodyguards with the blacks and white wanting nothing to do with
each other.  But by the end of the film they are close friends
playing ball together.

The story here is as predictable as would be another production of
"Hamlet", but it is cogently told and rousing.  In spite of its
obvious, but historically accurate, arc I rate INVICTUS a high +2
on the -4 to +4 scale or 8/10.  It is probably more than simple
coincidence that Eastwood is making this film at this time.  I
think this film is more than Eastwood just giving us a profile in
courage.  There are obvious parallels to another man who is the
first black President of his own divided country and who working
hard to bring together his supporters and his former political
rivals in a spirit that was perhaps inspired by Nelson Mandela.

Film Credits: <http://us.imdb.com/title/tt1057500/>

What others are saying:
<http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/invictus/>

The title of the film comes from the poem that Mandela found
meaningful and which he used to strengthen himself during his long
years of confinement.  For those who want the poem, here is
"Invictus" by English poet William Ernest Henley.  The title is
Latin for "unconquered".

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.


					Mark R. Leeper
					mleeper@optonline.net
					Copyright 2009 Mark R. Leeper

From homeryen88 at gmail.com  Mon Dec 21 14:06:51 2009
From: homeryen88 at gmail.com (Homer Yen)
Date: Mon Dec 21 14:06:53 2009
Subject: Review: The Princess and the Frog (2009)
Message-ID: <4a52a9000912162151s5cfe6863s645dde919fae05b0@mail.gmail.com>

"The Princess and the Frog" --  You'll Love It, Warts and All
by Homer Yen
(c) 2009

It's so nice to see Disney going back to its roots.  Sure, we've grown
accustomed to the more-life-like animation in films like "Toy Story"
and "Shrek."  And, we are even growing accustomed to the
motion-capture animation techniques seen in "Beowulf" and "A Christmas
Carol".  It certainly seemed like eons ago when we saw a 2D animated
film like "The Little Mermaid" or "Beauty and the Beast."

We all know from our childhood years how this story is supposed to go.
 An evil villain curses a handsome Prince by turning him into a frog.
The frog needs to find a Princess who will kiss him to break the
spell.  And all seems to be working out for the better when the frog
(voiced by Bruno Campos) kisses the fair Tiana (voiced by Anika Noni
Rose).  But, what if she's not actually a Princess?

Set during the heyday of New Orleans, this sets off a wonderfully cute
adventure between these two as they must find a way to undo what has
been done.  This will not be an easy task.  This Disney film offers up
one of the most delicious villains seen in some time.  It's the
macabre Dr. Facilier who dabbles in voodoo, embraces the dead, and has
a heart as black as that mean one, Mr. Grinch.

The music and the magic and the imagination are all on display here.
This was the era when the streets oozed with song and dance. The jazzy
music that defined this time and place add lots of cheer to the film's
tone.  During their adventure together, they run into a jazz-loving,
trumpet-playing alligator, a blind woman with some serious powers of
her own in addition to singing abilities, and even an endearing
firefly with serious dental hygiene issues but shows through his love
song that even people with serious dental hygiene issues can find
love.  As far as Tiana's voice is concerned, this girl can sing with
the best of them.  Anika Noni Rose, if you don't know her name, is a
Tony-award winning actress and starred alongside Beyonce and Jennifer
Hudson as the third member of "Dreamgirls."

The imagination and the fun are also present.  And, two standout
pieces include some frog hunters who can't outwit their prey in a
scene that evokes the Three Stooges.  Also, the fireflies that band
together create a kind of beauty in the Bayou that you would naturally
associate with a classic Disney film.  It's quite beautiful stuff.

Thankfully, the creative minds at Disney have not forgotten how to
appeal to the little kid in us.  They have not forgotten how to tell a
good ol'-fashioned story. And they have not forgotten how to compose
some catchy tunes.  "The Frog and the Princess" is a throwback to a
more innocent time when the images were lovingly hand-drawn and the
storyline was as easy-to-digest as a good song.  Yes, even one of the
plot points reminds us that when you wish upon a star, you're dreams
come true.  Nostalgia never felt so good.

Grade:	A

S:	1 out of 3
L:	0 out of 3
V:	1 out of 3

From mleeper at optonline.net  Mon Dec 21 14:08:41 2009
From: mleeper at optonline.net (Mark R. Leeper)
Date: Mon Dec 21 14:08:43 2009
Subject: Review: Crazy Heart (2009)
Message-ID: <op.u43w1trcy83cp7@mail-hub.optonline.net>

                           CRAZY HEART
                (a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

     CAPSULE: Jeff Bridges plays Bad Blake, a once-great
     country music singer who at 57 is reduced to playing
     in bars and bowling alleys.  He has one last chance
     at love with a reporter sent to interview him.  The
     reporter, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, could use a
     father figure for her son and Bridges likes the role.
     But there is a reason Bad is screwing up his life.
     Scott Cooper writes and directs based on Thomas
     Cobb's novel.  The story is familiar, but the Cooper
     gives us characters with texture.  Rating:
     +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10

Bad Blake (played by Jeff Bridges) was a country singer who in his
time had something of a following.  Many of the current popular
singers owe their style to learning from him.  But the show is
ending for Bad Blake.  He gets a few paying gigs these days, but
nothing great.  He drives his pickup all over the southwest to
rundown bars and bowling alleys that still have a place for him to
entertain their customers.  Bad gets his entertainment from the
bottom of a bottle.  He prides himself on never having missed a
performance, but too often when he should be on stage his face is
in a trashcan losing his last few drinks.  In Santa Fe attractive
reporter Jean Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal) interviews him and the
two of them hit it off.  He even likes Jean's little boy.  The
problem is that Bad and Jean and the bottle make for a crowd of
three and it is one too many.  Bad wants to commit, but he cannot
help living up to his first name whenever he passes a bar or sees a
cute young fan in the audience.

Bridges plays the role note-perfectly.  He seems to like to play
singers in lots of different genres.  He was a stoned-out rock
singer in TIDELAND.  Earlier in his career he was a lounge singer
in THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS.  He can be a maverick automobile
executive, a mathematics professor, the President of the United
States, or an alien.  He will not be typecast and his characters
have depth and authenticity.  With Robert Duvall as a bartender and
an old friend of Bad, that makes two actors of that quality in this
film.  And the two actors have something else in common.  Neither
has much of a singing voice.  Bridges does his own singing in this
film, but I do not expect he will cut an album any time soon.
Robert Duvall may be the greatest American actor today (and he does
a mean tango), but when he tries to sing in the closing credits the
results are painful.

Stephen Bruton and T-Bone Burnett wrote the country music.  Burnett
is himself a country music legend.  In addition he provided music
for O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU? and THE LADYKILLERS (2004).  Here he
lends a tone of authenticity and style.  The film is reminiscent of
Robert Duvall's TENDER MERCIES.  It is a sort of old shoe of a
film, comfortable with nothing really fancy.  You really care if
these two people will make it together.  And there is some nice
scenery that Bad Blake passes as he travels the Southwest.  But the
center of attraction is that performance by Bridges.

Some good country music and some people you care about make this
film likable if nothing flashy.  But Bridges's characterization is
first rate.  I give CRAZY HEART a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10.

Film Credits: <http://us.imdb.com/title/tt1263670/>

What others are saying:
<http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/crazy_heart/>


					Mark R. Leeper
					mleeper@optonline.net
					Copyright 2009 Mark R. Leeper

From homeryen88 at gmail.com  Mon Dec 21 14:10:10 2009
From: homeryen88 at gmail.com (Homer Yen)
Date: Mon Dec 21 14:10:12 2009
Subject: Review: Avatar (2009)
Message-ID: <4a52a9000912181954l2d1624f0q6765d762892a3669@mail.gmail.com>

"Avatar" - James Cameron is Still King of the World
by Homer Yen
(c) 2009

Some people don't know how to invest $300 wisely.  What would they do
with $300 million?  James Cameron knows.  And "Avatar" will be, dare I
say, the "Star Wars" for our generation.  It has groundbreaking
special effects, an epic-if-familiar storyline, and ideas to
scintillate the casual moviegoer, which will be the de facto water
cooler conversation for days to come.

This, overall, is an incredible film.  The story itself isn't
groundbreaking, but it puts in all of the necessary ingredients that
make it a blockbuster without chopping everything into frenzied edits
the way that summertime films do.  The film runs 2 hours and 41
minutes, but there's a lot of great stuff nicely packed in.  I heard
an anecdote told at a recent Time Management seminar.  Everybody's
day, which consists of 24 hours, is just like a suitcase.  It's just
that the smart people know how to pack more into their suitcase than
others.

There are stories about the humans, most notably Jake Sully (Sam
Worthington) who is a paraplegic Marine who can have his paralysis
healed through some very expensive surgery if he completes his mission
on a forest moon called Pandora.  He is to gain the trust of the
Na'vi, a peaceful race of slender giants who are surprisingly adept at
defending themselves.  There are also background stories involving
many of the Na'vi, who are generally more interesting than their human
counterparts.

It's a tough-but-successful sell here.  When it's humans versus
others, we naturally root for the humans.  But, when we root for the
others, it's usually for something way-over-the-top like Optimus Prime
and his brave bunch of peacekeepers.  As 12-feet-tall, otherworldly
creatures go, they are incredibly graceful and even sexy.  Thank
goodness someone at the Dept of 12-Feet Tall Otherwordly Creatures was
able to successfully filter out the yucky aftertaste of the
Battlefield Earth, 9-ft tall, bearded warriors.  Patooey!  Certainly,
Cameron displays his unconditional resolve to get everything just
right in the same way that George Lucas did for his "Star Wars" and
Peter Jackson did for "LOTR".

The weakness in this film stems from the menacing foe that the good
guys must defeat - a warmongering Marine.  All of James Cameron's
"menacing foes" seem one-dimensional.  I think about the "Terminator"
or the "Alien" or that snooty snob from "Titanic".  They've all lacked
a certain wit about them, which diminishes their love-to-hate factor.
Darth Vader was a great character that you loved-to-hate.  Cameron's
creations are, however, villains that you'd hate to love.

See this film as it was meant to be seen (in 3D).  And Cameron
overcomes another annoying tick inherent with 3D films - the perpetual
dimness.  This film is very well-lit and he has really taken this
technology to a significantly new level.  The $300 million was not
spent so that you can watch it in 2D.  I mean, if Morton's Steak House
sends you a coupon for "Get Any One Entr?e Free", why would someone
pick the hamburger?  So, don those 3D glasses and get ready for a
great experience.

Cameron originally conceived the story back in 1995.  But his
visualization of what should be on the big screen was far more
ahead-of-its-time versus what technology could handle back then.
Since then, however, appetite for animation films has steadily
increased.  Also, commercially successful films such as "The Lord of
the Rings" saga and "A Christmas Carol" proved that, along with a good
story, people were embracing the cutting edge animation techniques.
Even watching a film like "2012", you have to wonder what's next for
special effects advancements.  Indeed, it's a whole new world out
there.  And today's movie-watching world and today's technology are
now ready to come together for "Avatar".

Grade:	A-

S:	1 out of 3
L:	1 out of 3
V:	2 out of 3

From mleeper at optonline.net  Mon Dec 21 14:14:49 2009
From: mleeper at optonline.net (Mark R. Leeper)
Date: Mon Dec 21 14:14:52 2009
Subject: Review: The Young Victoria (2009)
Message-ID: <op.u5arceliy83cp7@mail-hub.optonline.net>

                        THE YOUNG VICTORIA
                (a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

     CAPSULE: Director Jean-Marc Vallee and screenwriter
     Julian Fellowes bring us the story of the rocky, early
     years of what was to become England's longest monarchy.
     The film starts with some of the drama of that other
     film of another English queen, ELIZABETH.  Perhaps
     because of the directing or perhaps because of stilted
     manners of the late Georgian and early Victorian era
     the film never again catches fire as it does in the
     early scenes.  This is a story of romance, of influence
     peddling, and of betrayals, played so dryly that we
     never strongly care what happens.  Rating: low +2
     (-4 to +4) or 7/10

Very early in THE YOUNG VICTORIA we see the future queen (played by
Emily Blunt) just seventeen years old and ill while her stepfather
is browbeating her and she is vehemently resisting.  He could be
trying to convince her to take cough syrup.  In fact, he is Sir
John Conroy (Mark Strong) and he is trying to coerce her to sign an
order making her mother, the Duchess of Kent (Miranda Richardson),
her regent.  That would be making him the de facto ruler of the
United Kingdom.  She has power now, even if too young to wear the
crown, and if she gives it up she will probably never get it back.
It is the signature moment of the film.  Here is a girl the age of
a high school junior and her family squabbles and her attitudes and
decisions will heavily impact not just her life but also the future
of her country, Europe, and the world.  She is a young woman, but
she is the center of a very high-stakes game for power.

This is the story about how Victoria played a dangerous game of
power and tried to find love and fulfillment.  Suitors besiege her
in the hopes of winning her hand and her power.  Many would wish to
be her advisor.  In the next few years she would ascend to the
throne as Queen of England and would have to run her country.
Needing help in playing the game she gets an advisor whom she at
least temporarily trusts, Lord Melbourne.  (Melbourne is played by
Paul Bettany who had no easy time--and in fact fails--playing a man
who was forty years Victoria's senior.)  One of her suitors is
Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg (Rupert Friend).  At first he is
obviously a puppet groomed and tutored to attract her with
pretended identical interests, a ruse she sees through immediately.
Once Albert can be himself, the two find that they might just like
each other.  Their on-again, off-again relationship might lead the
viewer to wonder if they have a future together (at least if the
viewer has not been to the Victoria and Albert Museum).

As a viewer I was interested in the history, but found this film
frustrating.  People of this time period were expected to behave
very properly and to not show a lot of emotion, certainly in
public.  That or the acting robs these characters of much of their
interest value.  Blunt is charming as Victoria in ways that may not
be expected by most people who have seen the usual rounded and
older pictures of The Old Queen.  But the people of this story are
not much more interesting than they would be in a non-fiction
history book.  It is worth seeing the late Georgian fashions and
furnishings, but the actors are little more.  Bloodless and
reserved, they just never come to life.  All the plots against
Victoria are just ever so slightly distressing.  There would be
little dramatic tension even if the viewer were uncertain how it
all came out, but the future of this couple and later of just
Victoria is just too well known.  Even to the end we are never sure
if she love better Albert or her spaniel.  But she was the longest
reigning monarch of Britain, a title she will continue to hold
until she is surpassed on August 20, 2015.

With expectations from films like ELIZABETH, the viewer might be
disappointed at how unexciting the presentation is here.  The film
is better as a history lesson, albeit not a reliable one, than as
an exciting historical entertainment.  I rate THE YOUNG VICTORIA a
low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10.

Film Credits: <http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0962736/>

What others are saying:
<http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/young_victoria/>


					Mark R. Leeper
					mleeper@optonline.net
					Copyright 2009 Mark R. Leeper

From mleeper at optonline.net  Mon Dec 21 14:15:39 2009
From: mleeper at optonline.net (Mark R. Leeper)
Date: Mon Dec 21 14:15:41 2009
Subject: Review: 9 (2009)
Message-ID: <op.u5ar63yly83cp7@mail-hub.optonline.net>

                                 9
                (a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

     CAPSULE: In the short film of the same title, a world
     ravaged by the vicious robots built by a fascist dictator,
     several small mute homunculi, each numbered, battle
     to survive.  The Oscar-nominated ten-minute film is
     stretched to feature length.  There are lots of fights
     and the story a little bit extended with more plot.  Also
     voices of good actors are added to the formerly mute
     homunculi.  But what worked in the shorter form is not as
     impressive as a 79-minute film.  The film is unusual and
     visually striking but not really special as an animated
     feature film.  Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10

[This is not to be confused with the film NINE.]

The doll-like homunculus 9 finds himself in a post-apocalyptic
world laid waste by evil robots.  He befriends another homunculus
like himself named 2, and when 2 is captured by a robot 9 decides
to rescue his friend.  9 leads a revolt of doll-people against the
machines.  On the way he will learn about what brought the world to
this sorry condition.

When Shane Acker released his mysterious short film "9" it had an
impressive impact and was even nominated for an Academy Award for
animation.  It featured a mysterious little mute doll-robot or
homunculus with no name but the number 9.  He lived in a ravaged,
post-holocaust version of our world.  9 and his fellows, each
roughly six inches tall, seemed not made of metal and silicon like
the robots outside but of soft materials like burlap cloth and even
a zipper.  This was a little pliable thing in a world destroyed by
hard machines with sharp edges--mechanisms of metal and bone.  The
short film was a calling card and it bought Acker an opportunity to
expand a ten-minute project into a feature-length film.  But the
perfect length for this story and these mute characters is ten
minutes.

The short film version just had to create the imagery and to tell a
very short story.  A feature film required a more complete and
complex story.  The mysteries of the short film had to be solved
for the viewer.  The characters that in the shorter version got
most of their power from facial expression without sound.  For the
feature they were given voices of familiar actors.  Elijah Wood,
Jennifer Connelly, John C. Reilly, Crispin Glover, Christopher
Plummer and Martin Landau gave voices to the characters.  But this
made them less effective and not more.

The feature really needed to be a story as good as the images it
created.  Acker faced the problem that after a few minutes the
novelty of the visuals would wear off and the story would have to
carry the viewer.  Pamela Pettler extended Acker's story by having
more fighting with more evil robots and by spelling out a whole
political back-story.  The mystical whatever-it-is that happens in
the short film happens in the longer one, but that part remains
mystical.

Disturbingly, one can easily tell whether a doll, an animal, or a
machine is friendly or not.  Evil robots have one big red eye or
many little red spiderlike eyes.  They have sharp claws.  If it
looks ugly it is bad and if it look pleasant it is good.  This is
the same convention that Disney animation films have followed for a
long time.  And that studio has been teaching children to use that
same criteria in real life, where it might not be so good an idea.

There is a lot that is interesting to see in the world created by
Shane Acker but not enough to make the feature film satisfying.
The story is somehow similar to that of THE DARK CRYSTAL, but with
less complexity.  The feel of the story is also somehow reminiscent
of the stories of science fiction writer Clifford Simak. One might
have some idea of what was coming considering that among the
producers were Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov.  The latter
directed NIGHT WATCH, DAY WATCH, and WANTED.  It is not a bad
animated feature, but in the general run of animated films these
days the word for it disappointingly is "unexceptional."  I rate it
a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10.

Film Credits: <http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0472033/>

What others are saying:
<http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1205483_nine/>

Original short film:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=964QHmjLqa0>


					Mark R. Leeper
					mleeper@optonline.net
					Copyright 2009 Mark R. Leeper

From prestonage at gmail.com  Mon Dec 28 16:36:15 2009
From: prestonage at gmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Prestonag=E9?=)
Date: Mon Dec 28 16:36:17 2009
Subject: Review: Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002)
Message-ID: <2595af07-5329-4a0a-aa30-ffc04f1d58d8@v30g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>

          Austin Powers is back to foil another one of Dr. Evil's
schemes to gain money in a highly evil fashion. This time he plans to
pull a meteor into the earth with a now working tractor beam, hit the
ice caps, and thereby cause a worldwide flood, unless... he gets a
bunch of money.

          Austin Powers in Goldmember is a mediocre comedy containing
all reused jokes from it's predecessors.

          Yes, Powers does get a few laughs out of you with his sexual
puns and much innuendo. But, wasn't all that in the first two? Yeah.
Myers's river has started to run noticeably dry, but there's still a
little dripping. He's going to have to rethink it all if he wants to
make a fourth. Depending on your age and how much you like fart, pee,
poop, and stupid sex jokes plays a major role in how much you'll like
or dislike this movie. The writing is messy and needed many, many
revisions. The writing is vital to the Powers series because beyond
Myers's charm, acting is not too important in this, and neither are
production values. All that matters is whether they can produce a
solid script without senseless jokes to fill the time.

          A pretty bad movie is saved by Mike Myers's performance this
time, but not the next. Most of the jokes that did land couldn't of
without him and his perfect suitability to that role. This humor he
has, it's different than most every type you see, yet it feels so
generic. This is the Mike Myers humor. You know the Ben Stiller humor
(I do like that one), well this one with more stupid yet creative
jokes than you could count. Steady yet not bold enough direction is
what takes this series into a slump. Maybe they'll recover, maybe they
won't. It's up to them.

Rating: 5.2/10

From mleeper at optonline.net  Mon Dec 28 16:37:44 2009
From: mleeper at optonline.net (Mark R. Leeper)
Date: Mon Dec 28 16:37:45 2009
Subject: Review: Avatar (2009)
Message-ID: <op.u5dfh0jxy83cp7@mail-hub.optonline.net>

                               AVATAR
                (a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

     CAPSULE: AVATAR is very much a DANCES WITH WOLVES
     set on an alien world. It brings to the screen some
     great imaginative sequences and some great lapses
     in imagination.  It is about great evils in our
     past, but becomes a simplistic and self-righteous
     polemic.  Like James Cameron's previous film,
     TITANIC, there are enough good bits to make a really
     great film and enough bad bits to make a real
     stinker.  Go for what is good and ignore the bad.
     Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10

Spoiler warning: There are some spoilers in this review.

When I was growing up in the 1960s, what I considered the most
beautiful science fiction images would show up on the cover of the
science fiction magazine ANALOG.  An artist named Jack Schoenherr
painted many of these covers.  To me science fiction worlds and
alien species looked exactly like Jack Schoenherr painted them.
Science fiction films always fell a little short of creating that
imagery, though I felt his influence in STAR WARS, DUNE, and LOST
IN SPACE.  (Admittedly this art was not all by Schoenherr, but it
still showed his influence.)  James Cameron is the first director
to create a world in a science fiction film that reminds me of
Analog.  AVATAR has the most fully visually realized science
fiction world I can remember in a science fiction film.  Cameron
has envisioned a beautiful alien world complete with only semi-
Earthlike creatures.  Some of his images could be from ANALOG and
some from Cameron's own film THE ABYSS.  There are dragons and
forest predators.  There are horses and flying reptiles.  The film
is a joy to look at.  But it is not an unalloyed joy.  The visuals
still had their problems.  But I am getting ahead of myself.

The year is 2154 and Earth humans have a mining operation on the
alien world Pandora.  Huge machines move the earth operated by men
who must wear masks in this atmosphere.  The goal of the mining is
to get even miniscule amounts of the valuable mineral unobtanium.
The mining operation is running into trouble from the local
population, the Na'vi, who are so-called "savages".  They are on
about the level of sophistication that the Native Americans were
when the Europeans came to the New World.  The natives want the
mining operation to stay out of their sacred lands.  To study the
local people Dr. Grace Augustine (played by Sigourney Weaver) uses
Avatars.  These are alien-like bodies that humans when asleep, can
project their minds into.  The humans basically created alien
bodies for themselves.  One human who does this is Jake Sully (Sam
Worthington), a former Marine and now a paraplegic.  He no longer
can have a good life as a human so after some coercion he agrees to
project his sleeping mind into an alien avatar.  But being able to
put himself in the place of the Na'vi things go much the way they
did in DANCES WITH WOLVES or THE WILBY CONSPIRACY or DISTRICT 9.
He begins to appreciate them as people and to respect their
culture.  Each film goes much the same way and makes the same
statement.  There never is any doubt that that is what Cameron, who
wrote AVATAR as well as directed, is going to do with this story.
What surprised me was how heavily and pretentiously he lays on this
message.

Now what did I dislike about the visuals?  Well, the aliens are
basically human-like with faces and tails like big cats.  This goes
back to the imagery described by Edgar Rice Burroughs whose alien
creatures on Mars were chimera-like combinations of Earth
creatures.  How likely is it that something would evolve with human
bodies and cat faces?  How much different would the story have been
had the combination been pigs with cat faces?  We have that "Star
Trek" conceit working for us that almost all aliens look like us.
The females all had luscious bodies that were only minimally
covered.  It is convenient that in their culture they have chosen
to cover the same anatomical bits that we do.  And there seem to be
loose-hanging bits of their harem-like costumes.  Somehow they are
not all scratched up.  It makes for enjoyable images, but it does
not take much thinking.  The animals of the planet come in shapes
and much like variations on Earth creatures.  When we see a native
horse, there is no doubt in our mind that it is a horse even if its
lines are somewhat different.  It has six legs, but it still is
obviously a horse.  Cameron does not stray too far from Earth
animals on Pandora.

The story is very much like the history of what happened to Native
Americans in our own country, very likely the Lakota of the Black
Hills of South Dakota.  The had their sacred lands, and they were
sitting on the their own version of "unobtanium", namely gold.  But
there is in the film no one who asks if the situation is not a lot
like how the Native Americans were treated in the Americas and
isn't history's verdict that that was a terrible injustice?  It is
possible that a supremely irresponsible government might ignore the
rights of the indigenous population, but that nobody even notices
the parallels needed some serious explanation in the script and it
is just not there.  Cameron takes shots at the American military
(or the government) from the Indian Wars up to the Iraq War.  He
makes a comment about how we find some resource we want and then
declare the people who have it "the enemy".  I may sometimes feel
that was the reason, but it is a bit of an oversimplification.
Even if I agree with Cameron, I respect the alternative view and
not think this particular piece of politics belongs in this film.
Ironically, the same corporation that brings you Fox News produced
the film.  The Fox Corporation is so big occasionally pieces it try
to sue other pieces and have to be reminded that a company should
not sue itself.

Some problems could have been fixed.  Apparently cigarettes and
attack helicopters will be a lot the same in 2154 as they are
today.  So will be phrases like "in *this* economy" and "shock and
awe" that are more from our time than of 2154.

AVATAR is what I call a film of high standard deviation.  Parts and
aspects of the film are a lot better than other parts.  So with
some ambivalence I give AVATAR a middling rating of high +1 on the
-4 to +4 scale or 6/10.

Film Credits: <http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/>

What others are saying:
<http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/avatar/>


					Mark R. Leeper
					mleeper@optonline.net
					Copyright 2009 Mark R. Leeper

From prestonage at gmail.com  Mon Dec 28 16:56:09 2009
From: prestonage at gmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Prestonag=E9?=)
Date: Mon Dec 28 16:56:11 2009
Subject: Review: Adventureland (2009)
Message-ID: <379e2de7-968e-4ddf-b115-449ba6833fc7@g31g2000vbr.googlegroups.com>

  Pack your bags and head off to Adventureland where the games are
rigged and the rides are lousy. But the staff will provide you with
many laughs as James Brennan begins the only job he can get to pay for
his college tuition. There he meets Em Lewin and the two begin to see
each other. Everything is complicated by another girl, another guy,
and all the ridiculous things that happen to you as a carny.
  Adventureland is a comedy with a wonderful mix of all types of humor
and very well blended with romance and drama that strikes a cord we
should all see more of.
  There have been much funnier movies than Adventureland, but only some
possess the amount of oddly true romance such a good portrayal of how
much it would suck to work at a amusement park. The funniest humor in
the movie is definitely the physical, but the masses of wit comes in a
close second. It has everything from shots to the balls to threats
with a baseball bat. These are all well played and not just typical
stupidity because of this classic ensemble that well suites the 80's.
Especially funny characters are Bill Hader's and the kid from the AT&T
commercials, Matt Bush, as Frigo, a progressively outrageous kid who
is well acted. Good performances are all around including the two
leads. Jesse Eisenberg is very well suited and plays his character
very well. Kristen Stewart is even better. She plays a very
complicated person for a comedy. Em is depressed because she hates her
new stepmom, she commits adultery, drinks, smokes pot, and yet jokes
around. Ryan Reynolds is the only bad. He just didn't suit the role
and wasn't funny. The way the team interacts is funnier than any
situational comedy that lacks the cleverness of this production. It is
well directed and may not be that smooth, but any of the jokes will
make you forget any bump ever happened. Production values are a little
sketchy and that killer soundtrack makes it a bit hard to hear the
dialogue at some times.
  The 80's nostalgia is splendid and brings back a few giggles from
those times. The gentle charm of the characters mixed with their
eloquent dialogue feels real and makes it a good touching story of a
mixed up girl and a virgin guy.
  Adventureland is a sweet charmed comedy that nails the cultural
references and keeps the laughs and drama tightly wound for a
beautiful effect.
Prestonag? - PrestoBix.com

From prestonage at gmail.com  Mon Dec 28 16:57:59 2009
From: prestonage at gmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Prestonag=E9?=)
Date: Mon Dec 28 16:58:02 2009
Subject: Review: 3:10 to Yuma (2007)
Message-ID: <4b4e0b1e-c7da-4d8f-bc7d-8705a89bcef8@p19g2000vbq.googlegroups.com>

  The western genre has been in a steady decline in recent years. It
hasn't spawned near as many good films as it used to. But 3:10 to Yuma
should be a revival of the genre and please the many Cowboy fans
disappointed with other current westerns.
  The Wild West's most notorious outlaw, Ben Wade, is finally captured
and taken by the local Calgary and Dan Evan's, an impoverished rancher
and civil war veteran, to Contention and board the 3:10 to Yuma.
  Russell Crowe and Christian Bale's trek across the desert is a very
commendable mix of western and thriller, which is a rare find. Both
men's performances are fervid and filled with life. They are near
Oscar-worthy and are backed by an array of well cast, well portraying
actors led by Ben Foster who boasts a menacing and authentic
execution. The only one I had a problem with was Logan Lerman as
William Evan, the son. He was not western material and looks, sounds,
and acts like a freakin' cream puffed pussy. James Mangold guides
these men through a remake better than the original with swift
direction. Admitted, the first hour and a half gets a little tiring
and moves slowly, but that all builds to a very emotional and awe-
inspiring finale.
  3:10 to Yuma is a smart movie that is full of witless and unnecessary
dialogue that does move the plot forward, but undoubtedly could have
been written better. Characters are well developed and the writing
lets you learn more at an ideal speed, as they advance towards their
destination.
  Gunslinging hasn't been this good in a long time. 3:10 to Yuma brings
out the shotguns and freshly renews the showdowns. The action is
easily better than any other of its genre in the past few years and is
a nice change in strategy to the modernly placed action films.
  It's not perfect, but 3:10 to Yuma will give you a well spent 2 hours
and leave you satisfied as the credits begin to role.