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| I'm being bold and trying new things. With blogging becoming ever
so popular, more and more sites are springing up. I've heard
great things about WordPress and am going to give it a shot. It
seems better equipped with features and it also has a more
sophisticated appearance. I am not sure if it will be as good as
Xanga, but I am going to give it a try for a while and see if I can
establish networks there like I can here. Check it out:
http://moviedodd.wordpress.com
Merry Christmas everyone!
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| Well it looks as if my comments remain steady on the Xanga blog unlike the MySpace one, so Xanga it is!
Life has been pretty sweet. I am back in Sedalia, MO.
Most of the time I would talk shit on being back in Sedalia, but I
haven't seen my family since July. So it is fantastic to be
back. Plus I am eating real food again. Despite my ability
to prepare many meals, I still settle for the frozen crap to allow
myself more time for grad work. So cheers to pots of homemade
soup and juicy pork chops!
Movie news? Well I think you, me, and everyone's brother knows that King Kong
has been unleashed in theaters. Frankly, I haven't even bothered
to go near a theater yet. I haven't taken a look at numbers thus
far, but I can only assume that multiplexes are chaos right now.
Perhaps I will settle for the critically praised comedy The Family Stone this weekend and take in some Kong next weekend.
For now, I do have a couple of reviews. First up is The Chronicles of Narnia.
I suppose this is a LOTR Junior this year. It is based on C.S.
Lewis's books. This installment sees a group of kids escaping
into a faraway land through a wardrobe and fighting off a bitchy ice
queen (Tilda Swinton) with the assistance of a lion. You know...
this is a very good flick. Although it doesn't crack my favorites
list, it does achieve so much visually. In this day and age when
CGI is everywhere, the creators of this film put it to good use.
This isn't worth a second trip, but I think it is worth checking out
for a one time fling in the cinema. Keep an eye out for the
blatant biblical parallels. Grade: B
Next up there is Syriana; a film that I enjoyed, but still
left me with a minor sense of emptiness. This is a genre of film
recently being referred to as a "hyperlink" film where various
characters are explored. They eventually cross paths with one
another. Examples include Traffic and Crash. In fact, this is directed and written by the same man that wrote Traffic, Stephen Gaghan. Syriana hops
characters in the world of the oil industry. We see a range of
participants from the mega-corporate oil tycoons to the Palestinian
field workers. This film has a lot going on, which will likely
lead to confusion. There are minor plot points I wish I could go
back and retrieve, though the confusion is not my problem. It
seems Gaghan tries to cram in so much plot structure, that we are
barely given a chance to get to know these characters. There is a
lot of action, but I rarely empathized with the characters. This
is especially so for an attorney character played by Jeffrey Wright who
seems to have problems at home that are hardly explored. Still, Syriana is a well-structured project, and I appreciate it much more than a lot of crap making it to theaters. Grade: B+
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| Alright, so I am going to give this thing a shot. I know some of you
may have followed my rants and raves on movies over at Xanga. I am
going to try the movie review thing on both MySpace and Xanga. This is being published on both sites.
I suppose I have no excuse for posting in a long
time. Usually I blame it on being buried up to my elbows in grad work,
but truth be told, I've been sitting on my ass the past couple of
weeks. Winter break on the quarter system is pretty sweet as it gives
me the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas off for Winter Break.
For the most part, I've been working on my course proposal and cracking
on DVD reviews for MovieWeb.
So what is out in the theaters that is worth a damn?
I can definitaly add Good Night and Good Luck to my Top 10 list of 2005. A few years ago, I highly appreciated George Clooney's underrated Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. So far as a director, I would say Clooney is 2 for 2. Good Night
is a very dialogue-heavy look at the era of the Red Scare. David
Strathairn plays Edward Murrow, a television journalist that stood up
to Senator McCarthy and his Commie witch hunts. Some may find this
movie dry, but this flick had me hooked from start to finish. Plus it
is about time David Strathairn gets props. I always thought he was the
shit after playing a blind computer hacker in Sneakers. Strathairn...you are the man. Grade: A
After seeing Rent
live on Broadway, I decided to give the movie a test drive. I was a
little cautious about this one. A movie version from the director of Home Alone?
In all honesty, I think the film is as good as it can be considering
the overbearing studio system. The thing of it is, the musical took
place on a mostly empty stage that allowed the audience to use their
imagination. It was a theater experience. The film sets up obscure
settings to make it look better on screen (e.g. a gay wedding
reception, an office meeting with a corporate honcho played by Sarah
Silverman). Still, they did stick with primarily the original Broadway
cast and the songs still give me chills. I will admit a smirk on my
face by the end. Grade: B
I also managed to check out the Thanksgiving flop The Ice Harvest.
My review is over at MovieWeb. I would post a link, but the site is
down at the moment. Just head over to "Reviews" and look for my name.
I will put it to you this way....I thought it was a massive
disappointment.
Alright, well hopefully I can do this multi-publish a bit and see which
blog site is better. I hope everyone is well, and Happy Holidays!
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| No time for reviews. Just want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!!! Be safe out there and eat well.
------Dodd | | |
| Heh...ok. Hi.
I figured that would be a suitable awkward opening for my Xanga.
Especially since I have not posted in a really long time. I am
not sure if anyone is even reading anymore. Either way, I like to
post these blogs to log my movie viewing experiences.
I am almost done with the Fall Quarter here at grad school. So
far so good on the grades. Hopefully I will be able to say the
same thing next quarter with assistantship work thrown onto the load.
As for reviews....I've seen a lot. So I am going to write on whatever I can think of off the top of my head.
Of course, I will start with the most recent flick I can think of. Jarhead
is the recent war film to hit theaters. Generally I could give a
crap. If you've seen one war film, you've seen them all.
They are so full of cliches, that I am desensitized to them.
Luckily, Jarhead is not the
typical combat film about going to war, killing the overseas baddies,
and coming home an All American Hero. It is about Operation
Desert Storm. As many of us may know, that was our first venture
into Iraq under the leadership of Bush Sr. The film is based on
the memoirs of Anthony Swafford, who went to war with the
Marines. After being trained as a raging killing machine, he
spent months in the desert and didn't fire his weapon once.
Despite the mixed reviews, I really dig Jarhead. Sam Mendes (American Beauty)
sits in the director's chair, and depicts Swafford's story of agression
and rage that led to disappointment. It seems that after men are
made into trigger-happy killing machines before a war, that sometimes
inactivity is worse than fighting. These guys go crazy in the
desert from waiting and waiting. Will Iraq attack? They
never know. But they sit on their guns every night just waiting
to go into combat. This is not a fighitng flick, but a comedic
character study. It is a war movie not like most war movies, that
that is why I am all about it.
Grade: B+
A History of Violence is close to the top of my list for this
year. David Cronenberg has created a graphic, masterful thriller
about a man named Tom (Viggo Mortensen) that owns a diner in a small,
friendly town. After murdering a couple of brutal killers in
self-desfense, he comes a town hero. However, a group of
suspicious Philly gangsters come sniffing around the town claiming that
Tom has a secret past life.
This movie pulled me in from start to finish and left me in a state of
amazement. Frankly, I've never been a hige fan of Viggo.
Perhaps that is because I don't think anyone in the Lord of the Rings
movies turned in performances as great as everyone says they are
(*cough* overrated). So I've waited for the man to turn in a
worthy performance, and this is it. Plus, Ed Harris and William
Hurt turn in supporting bits as creepy mob characters.
I have to give this warning because friends of mine and myself had
problems when seeing this in the theater. If you are seeing this
movie because "Strider" is in it, then rethink your decision.
This is a dark, ultraviolent depiction of secrets, graphic
violence, and kinky sex. It is what one has to expect from David
Cronenberg. When I saw this movie, the theater was full of loud
"Ringers" probably waiting for Viggo to whip out his sword and fool
around with an elf. This is definitely far away from Shire
territory and is a great outing for Viggo Mortensen. I would see
it again right now if I didn't have a couple Rolling Rocks in me.
Grade: A
Junebug is a little indie number that is probably out of
theaters by now. I managed to catch it a couple of weeks
ago. Crime/thrillers are genres that generalyl dominate my annual
top ten list, so I was hoping to love some different genres this
year. Junebug is a
great contender. It is a very calm character study of a North
Carolina man that brings his artsy New York art dealer wife home to
Hickville to meet his family. Light comedy and drama ensues.
If you are like me, you may be fed up with repetitive slapstick
comedies about meeting the parents. This flick hits the nail on
the head because it actually convinced me that meeting different
families may be like this. Embeth Davidtz plays the big city
daughter-in-law and does so with sophisticated sweetness. She
doesn't pull the predictable "snob" archetype. In addition, the
family are not depicted like worthless hicks. They are characters
with their own problems just like everyone else. Amy Adams turns
in what I think is one of the best performances of the year as the
family's pregnant daughter-in-law. Unlike the usual airheads that
play dumb for novelty, Adams plays a simple-minded girl with a heart of
gold. This is probably the small indie gem of the year.
Grade: A-
Proof is one of those movies that adds to my theory: you can't
make a movie about a brilliant person unless they are afflicted with
some horrendous problem. In this case Anthony Hopkins and
daughter Gwyneth Paltrow are mentally unstable kin with the ability to
invent earth-shattering proofs.
I like Proof. Though I
think I would rank it the best film of the year if I were a math
nut. It is not required to have a PhD in physics to see this, but
I think one would appreciate the rush of proving theorems if they
actually enjoyed doing so in real life. There are great
performances here and the movie runs at a fast pace. It is just
too bad the pay off is so...flat.
Grade: B-
I kicked out a review for Saw II. Click here if you want to check that out over at MovieWeb by clicking here.
I've seen so much more, but my memory is fuzzy. Perhaps I will be better about posting in the future.
Later!
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