Review

Inception

Dian and I saw Inception.

I think.

Love’s Labour’s Lost

Okay, let me start off by saying that there are only a scant handful of actors that I admire enough that I’d be willing to chance any movie or play simply because they’re in it.  There are a smaller group of directors who inspire such trust, but they exist.

Kenneth Branagh is the only individual who is in both lists.  I will gladly risk the price of a ticket if he’s in a movie or play, or is listed as the director.  When he is both acting and directing, then it’s all but guaranteed that I’ll like the production.

Then there is Love’s Labour’s Lost.

Love’s Labour’s Lost is one of William Shakespeare’s early comedies (which is often synonymous with ‘not very funny’) and it just might be one of his most intellectual plays.  In the classic performance, it simply reeks of literary allusions, puns, and extremely clever wordplay.  Unfortunately, it’s the very intellectualism of the comedy that made it one of his less popular plays, since the majority of contemporary audiences simply don’t catch much of the humor.  As a result, discovering a Kenneth Branagh production of Love’s Labour’s Lost at Netflix was like finding an unknown John Wayne western!

Shipmates, he did the damn thing in the style of a ’30’s musical!  He attempted to combine Cole Porter and William Shakespeare against a background of pending WWII.  Branagh is listed as the writer of the screenplay, which isn’t unusual (since most of the Bard’s work has to be edited for modern audiences), but  he sorta went a little too far this time, I think.

He incorporated  I Get a Kick Out of You, They Can’t Take That Away from Me, The Way You Look Tonight, Cheek to Cheek, I’ve Got a Crush on You, Let’s Face the Music and Dance (which he set as a sort of terrible erotic modern dance number, by the way, to replace the masked courting scene in Act V, scene II), No Strings (I’m Fancy Free), and There’s No business Like Showbusiness into the play, tossed out around half of the original material, and added the silliest ending that I’ve ever seen in a professional production of … well, anything!

Still, it had quite a few highlights:  Nathan Lane as Costard was a hoot and Timothy Spall did a hilarious Armado.  It also had a scene that, unique for anything by Shakespeare, had me laughing for a full minute.

Y’see, there is this line in Act IV, Scene III:  Biron, contemplating his situation, says, “By the Lord, this love is as mad as Ajax: it kills sheep; it kills me, I am a sheep: well proved again o’ my side.”  Okay, not a terribly funny line … hell, it’s not a terribly funny scene, in all honesty.

Branagh, however, setting the scene (and playing Brion) walked into a study and started his speech while walking over to a bust of Ajax with an arrow though its marble head.  When he reached the bust, he said, “By the Lord, this love is as mad as … well, as Ajax.”  Then, with one hand on the bust, he looked out the window at sheep passing by.  A subtle double take and the camera switched to a realistic dummy sheep, which promptly fell over with a lovely “bah” and the thud of a sack of cement hitting the turf from a ten foot fall.

Then he did the rest of the line:  “It kills sheep; it kills me.  I am a sheep, well proven again o’ my side.”

Dian and I howled with laughter and had to run the dvd back to hear the rest of the scene.

If y’all have a Netflix account and want to see what Branagh can do with only three weeks rehearsal and what seemed like a very light budget (around thirteen million, according to IMDB), then get the dvd and relax to a pretty interesting and often very funny film.  It might help if you think of it as more of a review and less of a Branagh Shakespeare … it did for me.

Sorcerers Apprentice

In that it was one of the few new releases not in the dreaded 3D format, Dian and I saw Disney’s new film, The Sorcerers Apprentice this afternoon.

When the credits started to roll and the lights came up, Dian grinned at me and said, “Now that was a very cute movie!”

That sums it up nicely.  Very Cute.  Good humor, good drama, good suspense … probably one of the best family films I’ve seen in years.  A pure ‘good vs. evil’ romp.  Hell, it just might be the best movie that Nicolas Cage has made in years.  Certainly the cutest.

Best of all, they actually managed to get the classic Mickey Mouse bit into the movie!  They set it up beautifully and I don’t think a single person in the audience actually saw it coming.

Strongly recommended.  Pay full price if you have to, but see this one.

Predators (No Spoilers, I think)

Dian and I checked out Predators last night and found it to be a predictable, but enjoyable, movie.

It opens with one of my oldest nightmares, that of awaking to find myself falling from an airplane.  Pretty cool.

The basic gist is that the Predators, instead of coming to Earth anymore for their hunts (and after the previous films, who can blame them?), they kidnap what they consider to be our best predators and transport them to a hunting preserve world, dropping them into the atmosphere while unconscious and letting them wake up on the way down.

So sets the stage:  A handful of humans versus a couple of Predators.  What ensues is pretty much predictable, with the occasional twist tossed in for fun, but far more enjoyable than any of the AVP movies that littered the landscape a few years back.

It’s not in 3D (hence Dian and I were able to see it) and, on a blood and gore comparison with the first movie, is a fairly non-violent film.  Pretty much safe for the entire family, in all honesty (which you might find to be either a good thing or a ‘aw shit’ moment).

Bottom line:  We enjoyed it and recommend it, but only as a matinee.  I wouldn’t bother paying full price, though.

Oh, spiffing … another costume change.

There is a word in every dictionary, a perfectly good word that has a perfectly good concrete definition.

Icon.

It’s not a hard concept, really, but people who happen to own the rights to an icon get all itchy about it.  Y’see, there’s only so much one can make off an icon.  It’s a steady, but finite, profit concept in a world of people trained to the belief that the only profits that count are massive windfalls.

So they fret and wibble and rant and finally get enough people to agree with them, then go a little nuts and – KABLAM! – do something like this:

Superman is an icon, but one can only sell so many comics of the same old, same old, last surviving son of Krypton, so they decided to shake it up a bit.  There have been other examples of this, but this is probably the most famous.

Was it a good change?

Hell, no!  Electro Superman sucked big time!

Was it intended as a permanent change?

Well … tough question to answer.  According to DC comics, it was just part of a planned story arc and his return to his classic costume and powers was always planned … but what else could they say when it tanked?  “Well, we screwed up?”

Here’s their latest attempt at a re-image:

DC really doesn’t seem to get the entire ‘icon’ thing, do they?

(By the way, is it just me, or does anyone else sorta get a old Superboy vibe from the jacket?)

Actually, screwing with Wonder Woman’s costume really shouldn’t surprise anyone, at least not anyone who’s read comics for any amount of time.  Wonder Woman’s look is something that the company just can’t seem to leave alone.

This is the original:

All the elements of the classic look are there, but since the time didn’t really permit decent women to run around in Daisy Dukes, there’s a full skirt instead of shorts.  Here’s a sort of overview of the various changes that have been made in just the last decade or so:

My personal favorite Wonder Woman change was when they decided to make her a sixties hipster, took away all her powers, made her a master of martial arts, gave an oriental teacher (named, and I’m not making this up, I Ching … check it out for yourself if you don’t believe me) and introduced the new Wonder Woman:

If you can believe it, this particular version lasted from late 1968 to mid-1973 and was only rescued and returned to her Amazonian glory by this woman:

So why is DC dicking around with her look now?

Well, they say it’s because they wanted “a more modern, urban look” and wanted to upgrade her out of fighting crime in what was, essentially, a bathing suit.  However, as befitting a comic book company, only ten years olds will buy that.

I’m betting the real reason is because of the planned Wonder Woman movie.  The same reason the company does damn near anything anymore, so that the major windfall profits of a successful movie, hopefully a series of movies, can be realized.

Because at DC, there is only one real icon they recognize and respect anymore:

The A-Team (one small spoiler)

I gotta say this right up front … if you have any problems suspending disbelief for the duration of a movie, save yourself the price of a ticket and give The A-Team a miss.  Seriously, they bend, break, and outright mutilate the laws of physics in this film.

On the other hand, if you can manage to overlook little things (like helicopters doing loop-de-loops), then plunk down your money and sit back to enjoy a really fun film!

Without being a precise copy, they managed to capture the good things about the television series and even make them a little better.  It’s a seriously fun film and you’ll find youself smiling throughout most of it.

Now, for the small spoiler, Dwight Schultz. is the only member of the original A-Team in the film and you really have to look sharp to catch him.  He’s the first psychologist in the military mental ward where Murdock is being held in Germany.  He’s not on the screen for long, but if you’re watching for him, he’s easy to pick out.

I recommend the movie … although I’ll never believe the tank escape in a million years.

The Drummer Gods have Blessed this one!

Okay, the front man is a bit of a doofus and there’s nothing particularly special about the rest of the band … buy, my O MY, what a drummer!!

I can hear the Drummer Gods applauding!

By the by, his name is Steve Moore and you can find more of the about at his website.

Robin Hood

Kewl … and slightly scary, in that this is the best movie I’ve seen in a long time.

Overall Review:  Good plot, good take on a classic legend, very good dialog, good action sequences, actual historical accuracy (!) sprinkled into the fantasy, and superb acting.  I’ll bet that this movie bitch slaps Iron Man out of the top spot with relative ease.  No extra bit at the end, so don’t bother waiting through the credits.

Specifics:  Cate Blanchett as definitely-not-a Maid Marion was inspired, as was the fact that – 0nce again – Russell Crowe took on an English role and did not insult anyone’s intelligence (or ear) by attempting an “authentic” English accent.  He simply used his own voice and concentrated on the roll.  Oh, and the bit where the Sheriff is putting up Robin’s wanted poster and, holding it against the post with one splayed hand, asks if anyone has any nails … classic.

An excellent example of what’s possible with top notch writing and acting, easy on the ground shaking explosions.

Iron Man 2 – No Spoilers

Eh.

Oh, yeah … good performances, good actions scenes, but crappy plot, crappy secondary plots, misleading advance clips, and – while, keeping in fashion with the first movie – there is a surprise bit after the credits, which was received with equal squeals of fanboyish delight and moans of “I sat through the friggin’ credits for that?!?”  (Actually, I think some of the disappointment was from the fact that the surprise had to – logically – relate to one of the Marvel movies currently being set up for release next, so there was less surprise than there was in the first one when the spitting image of the Ultimate universe’s Nick Fury showed up.)

So, eh.

I’m betting there were tons of deleted scenes that will only show up when the DVD comes out, stuff that really should be used for a half hour longer director’s cut, stuff that would have filled in quite a few of the gaps, but were cut to keep the action lively or from boring the easily distracted or whatever… but we won’t know that for a couple of months.

Don’t get me wrong; I liked it, to a certain value of “like,” even though it wasn’t half the story the first movie was, but Dian was completely bored halfway through (and she loved the first movie).

Groundhog Day

One of my all-time favorite movies.  Cheers me up with I’m depressed, tickles me when I’m happy, and works my brain each and every time I see the damn thing.

I mean, okay, I can accept that a man can go fr0m musically inept to performance level keyboard player in … what?  Say ten or so years?  If he really works at it daily?

But when he ice sculpts a bust of his love interest, flawlessly, … how the fuck long would he have to work at it to be able to do something like that?  I mean, first he has to learn to be able to sculpt busts realistically, which is a dead bitch from what I understand, but that leaves the specialized form of ice sculpture, which means having to understand the medium well enough not to destroy it attempting to create art.

So how long would it take?  A couple of decades?  Fifty years or so to get really good at it?

I cannot imagine a worse hell than having to relive the same day over and over and over.  Hell, flashbacks to the sinking of my ship damn near put me away.  The fact that he actually relived that day so often to go completely through insanity and end up a better person for it … incredible.

If you’ve never seen this film … what rock have you been hiding under?  Rent or buy the DVD and enjoy a deeply philosophical, but clever, movie.