I “quickly” review books I’ve read and movies I’ve seen recently (part 2) oh and some Irish trip commentary

Well this is my second day and Ireland and it has been really fun so far. But instead of talking about all of that and with just an hour before I leave for the train station to go to Achill Island I decided to review some more movies I have seen.
Well since my brother had written his own reviews of things and added some more with a great comment on my last post of reviews and since I have recently watched a few more movies I decided I should share my thoughts on them here. I’m not going to bother with the rating system, just going to give you my thoughts and you can take that as my review.

1. Thor. Great mythology but not the greatest of movies. For extra craziness its directed by Kenneth Branagh… taking a break from filming the entirety of the works of Shakespeare… go watch Henry V now. Anywho… the movie is exciting and for those who love comic book movies this one will not disappoint. But I think its strong points were in the mythology of the story… I almost felt like I watching a movie with a cool Norse mythology story in it and then this comic book story kept intruding on it. I don’t think it was as bad as that but I do think they should have spent the first movie on Asgard and other places of Norse mythology… and had it then end be where he is banished to Earth. It would have allowed them

I “quickly” review books I’ve read and movies I’ve seen recently

Well this isn’t the Archaeological Field School Part 2 yet but I’ve decided to go ahead and review some of the media I have consumed over the past half a year. I just got a Kindle so I was inhaling books for a while there as I binged on them. I also watched a few movies I think I’ll review. These will be very quick reviews with just snippets of critique and a very basic rating system. For the books the system will be grading the setting with one score, a thumbs up/thumbs down rating, and the other thing being graded will be the story with the same rating system. For the movies I will grade the music, cinematography, and story. So let’s get to it.

Books:

1. Gregor the Overlander

Setting: Partial thumbs up. Not the most interesting of settings but not completely terrible. I really like underground settings but this one couldn’t quite grab me. Also I found the idea of him falling a long ways at the beginning confusing and hard to understand exactly how far down he is when that aspect is used later in the story.

Story: Thumbs down. Read like young adult fiction to me and stereotypically so with rushed action and movement from plot point to plot point, obligatory plot twists, a sense of learning the “systems” of the world that just rang false for me. As well as not the most natural of dialogue to me.

2. The Historian

Setting: Thumbs up. Holy cow I love the Europe of this novel, all these places I’ve been that have this otherly feel in the book that I really like where it’s not quite different but not quite the same as the real book. Also the nature of the story as a fictional historical mystery taken with all the scholarly respect of a real historical mystery lends it a very intellectual feel without resorting to the density of something like Umberto Eco’s novels.

Story: Thumbs up. The story is built with a

Toy Story 3 and Pixar

(*spoilers* for Toy Story 3 once I get into the review)

Well I’m not dead, but ugh I have two rather massive posts that I have not been able to convince myself to finish. One on time travel, the other on NERF gun warfare. It remains to be seen whether I’ll finish them. In the meantime though I have gone to see Toy Story 3 with my cousins and I thought it was good enough to review and talk about my feelings for Pixar.

I am not someone who specifically seeks out animated films. I need a good bit of prodding from others to go see them. But the right word from the right source and I will see animated films in heart beat. I especially love animated films that I know will fly over kid’s heads or scare the crap out of them whether because of a deep storyline, “boring parts” where there isn’t much action or talking or jokes going on, or just pure violence. I love the movies that have fallen through the cracks of the animation age ghetto and managed to tell great stories in spite of the kiddie-stigma all animated films face. Some of my favorites are of course those coming out of Studio Ghibli in Japan, especially Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle, Watership Down and The Secret of NIMH for more western fare.  I also liked Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon from Dreamworks,

My favorite movies

Without thinking too much about what my 5 favorite movies are, here they are and in no particular order:

1. Lawrence of Arabia: I watched this film for the first time when I was twelve and my jaw dropped. I was humming the tune of Maurice Jarre’s enthralling theme for months upon end. The cinematography is spot on depicting vast vistas effortlessly. Peter O’Toole’s performance of Lawrence goes beyond words and rounds out the already epic features of this movie masterpiece. And finally as a character study of the man this movie holds nothing back in its depiction, showing nothing short of an intricate and deep analysis of one of the most complex men of the twentieth century. While many would argue that it was not an accurate depiction, I would say that at some point it is a Hollywood film, and meant to entertain and as a character study it is a lot more  accurate than most.

2. Chariots of Fire: THE best period film. Watch it for the amazing score and stay for the deep character analysis and layered narration. You can always tell a Vangelis scored movie when the speaking audio is at least 4x quieter than the soundtrack (see Blade Runner, The Bounty, and 1492: Conquest of Paradise). This movie effortlessly sucks you into the 1920s and doesn’t let go until the last race is run. Every runner should see this film at least once.

3. Henry V: Shakespeare at its best. Kenneth Branagh know how to adapt a Shakespeare play to the big screen. The intonations of the text feels natural and surprising makes it easier to understand what the heck is meant and is going on. The Battle of Agincourt is an exercise in minimalism and how much you can convey on the big screen without the need for giant set pieces and huge armies (don’t get me wrong I enjoy those as well but there is a lot done here for a little amount). My highlights of the film include the stellar intro by one of my all-time favorite actors, Derek Jacobi of Cadfael and Gladiator fame, and the rendition of “Non Nobis, Domine” that plays while they intern the dead to take back to England, powerful stuff.

4. The Empire Strikes Back: My favorite Star Wars film; it is unmarred by the poor early part of Return of the Jedi and with more sweet battles than A New Hope. It has THE plot twist, not that we can call it that anymore really, it has bounty hunters, the asteroid belt, the Hoth battle, “Stand by Ion Control…”, “Our first catch of the day…”, “Enemy troops have enter the base… enemy troops have… *crackling static*,” the Millennium Falcon outmaneuvering star destroyers, the imperial officers, imperial navy change of commands… Empire was dark, and in my opinion is the only entirely successful middle film to a trilogy, The Two Towers comes very close but I think it works best when viewed in light of the trilogy. Empire succeeds with the trilogy and on its own.

5. Gattaca: my guilty pleasure when it comes to sci-fi, it came down to this and 2001: A Space Odyssey. If I was truly pressed I would give a tie between the two, 2001 was an amazing technological achievement wrapped up in a confusing and quiet film that acted as more of spiritual and scientific dream-quest. Gattaca however is light on the sci-fi and heavy on the noir but not to the extreme of Blade Runner (three-way tie?). It asks some very plausible questions for the near future and it answers them in a deeply moral way I feel. It is an uplifting tail with an amazing minimalist soundtrack. It has two or three effective twists in it but that is not the point of the film. It is a testament to mankind as randomly and spiritually made, as they say, “There is no gene for the human spirit.”

I am a big fan of movies and like many, many more. But I am always on the lookout for more movies that make me feel certain ways and make me think.

Alice in Wonderland

I saw Disney’s “Alice in Wonderland” in 3D today with my girlfriend, Alanna. We didn’t even mean to go see it but we found ourselves over by the movie theater and thought, what the heck, might as well see something. We settled on “Alice in Wonderland” as it was the closest to the time we were at right then. It was the first 3D movie I had seen in a long, long time so that was pretty cool with the glasses looking like BCGs, stuff popping out at us and what not.

The movie itself was ok, better than I expected, but definitely no “Edward Scissorhands.” All in all it was a lot of fun to go on a date and see a movie like that. Oh and I liked Christopher Lee as the Jabberwocky, wish they could have given more material or something… had him seduce the Red Queen with his evil power or something cool like that, Christopher Lee is sweet. Stephen Fry as the Cheshire Cat I enjoyed as well and the March Hare was pretty darn funny. Johnny Depp was, well… being Johnny Depp but I don’t know if that’s what was needed here, he was cool when he brought out his Scottish side though and it would have been awesome to see him fight with a claymore. His dance though… ugh it was out-of-place to say the least, either they needed to set up that kind of dissonance of tone earlier in the story or made his happy dance more of Wonderland Underland. Relatively decent CGI as I didn’t find myself thinking too many times oh hey it’s another CGI thing. I think that mostly had to do with the abundance of CGI objects; it would have been easier to play spot the non-CGI stuff.

I enjoyed the film, it was a good night out, and I got to finally experience this new 3D stuff everybody has been on about. 3/5 stars.