Summer Movie Review: Brave

BRAVE came out today and since it was also daughter #2's birthday we headed over the pass, that now tonight might be burning, (click her for that story), and went to see the movie in Durango.
I can't do the "yeah, it was a great movie" dance, but it was the best summer offering I have seen in so many summers, I refer back to my "whining" last summer on Cowboys and Aliens.
BRAVE does deliver an enjoyable and refreshing two hour ride.
Most excitingly is that BRAVE is totally a "Girl" story. Be forewarned there is quite a long view of "kiltless" Scottish backsides, but I kept waiting for the obligatory love or crush interest that always appear in fairytales like HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON...

or TANGLED...

But there isn't a Boy, well other then her three three young menacing brothers....

                                   

The story is actually about a daughter's fight to be in control of her own destiny, her greatest adversary, her mother. You could call BRAVE a Celtic FREAKY FRIDAY...

Where a witch helps the two see each other's side of things, I won't say more since I don't want to ruin the story.

BRAVE also has kudos for passing the "Girl Test", not once does any character talk about "A boy" and there is lots and lots of dialogue between mother and daughter.

Pixar Animation has come a long way in their technology, since the break through of animating  each hair of Sully's fur independently in Monster Inc.

 Merida hair, red long and curly is continuously waving around her head. Her only real companion is Angus, a gorgeous huge and rather hairy horse...

Which also is so much more amazing because of the advancements made in animation over the last couple of years since Avatar...

But the neatest thing for me about BRAVE, was how a Scottish tapestry played a big part in the movie, I'll say no more, but do recommend going and seeing BRAVE this week, since it is about the best offering we have on the horizon for kids.

Well there is MADAGASCAR 28! , I mean 3, MADAGASCAR 3...

Which showed at Cannes, no joke! I am worried, very worried for the coming movie seaon!

Review: Snow White and the Huntsman

"Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?" are the famous lines spoken by the Evil Queen in Snow White. Problem with particular take on the legendary tale, is The Evil Queen has almost all of the lines and most of the spotlight....

   

The movie is like the trailer, The Evil Queen, The Evil Queen, another special effect with ......

the Evil Queen, a little bit of Snow White, more Evil Queen, the Huntsman is actually the most developed character with a tragic back story and actually has dialogue. The Queen is too busy being beautiful and Snow White has very little dialogue or much control of her fate, or much time to develop her full blown character. The assumption is we all know the classic tale, so we can just appreciate the cool effects and drop dead gorgeous actors and actress, which they definitely are.  It is another what I call a "pretty and I know it" movies designed for the younger generation, with the philosophy that if the effects are cool enough and the actors pretty enough, seems even the guys, teenagers will flock in, guess they do, cause they keep making them, but  I don't recommend....

 or.....

Please someone in Hollywood, please write a story, instead of a redo!

Review: The Lucky One

Took the girls over the pass to Durango for a girls day and saw The Lucky One starring Zac Efron and Taylor Schilling. The film brings to life another of  bestselling author Nicholas Spark's novels, which quiet a few have been turned into movies, starting with...

Which is about, sorry for the spoiler, about finding love in an unusual place, momentarily, before someone dies. Then came ...

also finding love before someone dies, except this time it is quick and unexpected instead of long and slow... Then comes....

which is about finding love, again, before someone dies, of old age this time. Then there was...

which is about.....finding unexpected love before someone dies, quick this time. Then comes along...

About Not finding love for a long time because of duty and guilt, while someone else dies. Followed by...

which is also in a nutshell about love and life waiting until someone dies.

Do you see a pattern in Nicholas Sparks movies. So here comes The Lucky One. Does someone die? Should I tell you? Of course I will, but first let me get up the red Alert Spoiler is coming warning.

SPOILER ALERT * SPOILER ALERT * SPOILER ALERT

No one dies in The Lucky One..............well, that isn't really true actually, cause the family Efron comes to, to find "girl" is grieving the loss of a son who was also a soldier and didn't come home, thus why Efron finds the picture on the battlefield, but the lovers prevail until the very end....and then someone dies ( But it is a minor character, so don't worry, it just gives a clean tidy ending to the story)

The Lucky One wasn't a "bad" movie, it just wasn't a good movie. It didn't inspire me, give me anything to chew on and think about when I left the movie theater. It, like really all of Spark's stories, took the easy way, the cliche'  way of pulling at our heart strings- death, grief, cancer- all bring up the emotional Geiger counter really fast without a lot of effort in the writing side. His stories really are just a matter of "same song, different verse". He has created "a universe" and now it is just a matter of changing the names and the setting of the characters and reaping the huge financial benefits from what Hollywood considers a "sure thing". I just wish they would start taking chances again!

Something else I find odd- that will definitely be a post in itself- what is happening with the trailers of these let us say- not very meaty offerings Hollywood is trying to ram down our throats, with the lie that they are giving us something new, refreshing and well, good! We are getting the WHOLE story in the trailer- no longer is it a teaser, a peek of just a few of the good bits, with the allure of coming to see the whole movie to get the rest of this good interesting story. Which by the way is what a trailer should offer. Now, we usually get ALL of the few really interesting bits, cause there ain't anymore and lately, even the endings! The Lucky One Trailer to me is not trying to tantalising us into coming and  finding out the rest of the story. It is, like many trailers aimed at a young demographic saying.... come watch Zac Efron! Which I guess is nothing new, really, and you know Elvis made movies....

and I think the girls of that generation were not going to the movies to be taken on a journey of a really good story. But I am old and I can be "tantalized" at the movie, but how about a good story with some muscle to it, instead of it being a vehicle to just watch the firm and possibly tattooed muscles on the screen!

Review: Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

I have spent the last couple of days, doing battle with a "un-named" hacker who entertained themselves with messing with my google account and all the blogs there within! Finally got that all fixed and it inspired me to think of the good "hacker" movies I have seen and totally realized I have never reviewed The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

Warning! This is the vilest of vile stories turned into a really good movie. Which is very different than a good story turned into a vial movie. Every bit of nudity, language and violence in this movie, in my opinion, just makes the story more real and honest. That is the difference between The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and some of the trash out there now which is like those "Butterball" turkeys that start out kinda of puny but then it is injected with a lot of crap or in the movie business naked women, cuss words and blood spatters. How about we just get back to Real stories told honesty?

The story, originaly titled Man How Hates Women, is first of a series. It was written by the late, Swedish author Stieg Larsson and already made into a Swedish movie. This is a story that has gotten a lot of press, articles in Vanity Fair and such and Larsson's legacy has definitely lived on through the efforts of his partner Eva Gabrielsson.

The story, or US movie adaption, centers around Mikael Blomkvist...

a black marked journalist who seeks sanctuary in the far north writing  the patriarch of a wealthy family's memoir, but what he ends up doing is solving one of the family's little dirty secrets, intertwined in power, anti Semitism and as the original title suggested....men who hate women.

The Swedish setting is wonderful, I wish more movies would be set in such places, instead of always in LA, New York, or London. The stark landscape and Scandinavian style of the cars, houses, furnishings set against the greys and white of winter really adds to the story.

Mikael is played by one of the my favorite actors Daniel Craig, of course known for the OO7 franchise...

The patriarch of the family is played by Christopher Plumier...

who, though in his early 80's , has  had a resurgence of late with movies such as the Last Station...

And Lisbeth,  as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo...

is played by Rooney Mara, whose biggest movie so far has been The Social Network...

which I confess I have no desire to see, but will be definitely looking out for her next starring roles.

In the movie, Mara is a brilliant computer whiz and hacker and a ward of the state with an sadistic social worker, who demands sexual favors from her. Putting an end to that, Mara also seeks refuge in the far North, taking on the job of research assistant to Craig.

The two form a rather untypical love interest and the dark secret of the Vanger Family empire only are revealed with both of their unique skill sets and tenacity. Again, be warned this is an uncomfortable movie to watch in many ways...

Interestingly, for a movie with such a strong female character, it fails "the girl test" which according to bechdeltest.com...

1. Does the movie have at least two named women characters in it? YES

2. Do they talk to each other? NO

3. Do they talk to each other about something besides a man? NO

Most movies fail or barely make it. In The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Lisbeth has a adversarial relationship with a company archive secretary, when she is trying to research the movements of one of the company's executives, but she never talks to another named female character. Hum?

The US version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is out now on DVD and available for download on Amazon.

The original trilogy...

in Swedish is available on Netflix at the moment with English subtitles.

A New Classic...

Tonight is the second installment of PBS's Masterpiece Theater's Birdsong, based on the 1993 novel by Sebastian Faulks, about an impossible love during the First World War. The story, centered around Stephen Wraysford, a young English officer, losing men and digging trenches to nowhere under the battlezone known as "No Man's Land"...

Flashback tell us the story of his lost love and the reason for the added anguish he feels now. The modern story has a classic feel to it, more like Hemingway's Farewell To Arms...

Eddie Redmayne, his name fitting, with a blaze of red hair and freckles, you might of seen in a recent Burberry fashion spread plays Stephen in the movie. The actor hasn't had a lot of starring roles yet, but amazingly he has comeback from the dead twice already, not too much of a spoiler for Birdsong, which includes the mircle in the trailer, but amazingly, he was also almost buried alive in his other well known role, that of Jack, the young apprentice to Tom Builder in Pillar's of the Earth...

At the moment you can see Birdsong- here on pbs.org and Pillars of the Earth is available to rent on Netflix.

A Weekend of "Horror" in Denver...

Jon had to be up in Denver, meeting with the legislature, so I tagged along to plop down in coffee shops during the day and get some work done while he had his meetings. Then come the weekend, before we headed home, we took a few days of R and R and stayed at the Curtis, a Retro Hotel with theme on every floor. We stayed on the 13th floor, the elevator announcing "Here's Johnny!" as the door opened to a lovely blown up illustration of Jack Nicholson coming through the door with the hachet- but I digress....

The view from our room was very "voyeuristic" and I enjoyed keeping an eye on this lovely circa turn of the 20th century apartment building that with further studied revealed wonderful details like the "Romanesque" arches with the trade off of white and red bricks....

And on the very top a "penthouse?" or ""commons room" surrounded by gargoyles. They don't make them like this anymore do they, sadly!
For our whole stay, I kept an eye on the windows, which appeared to be framing the front living rooms, some with the shades pulled down, some dark, but some illuminated and revealing just the edge of a couch, or a painting on the wall, or the view blocked by flowers in a window box.
While I watched in the morning, as the city came awake, a shade went up and a blond haired lady replaced the pillows on the window seat and then disappeared. From below, many residence came out  of the double wide doors, bracing for the cold and headed to work or to walk their dogs. I watched as the street came alive with pedestrians, in long wool coats, scarves and messenger bags and I wondered where they were going, to what ugly high rise, which surrounded the red and white brick apartment on all sides, swallowing it?
Soon, even the blond haired lady exited the front door and headed down the street, but my attention was taken back to the door, where several ladies were returning with their dogs and as eached stopped at a keyed entry box,  my intentions to go down and try to peek in the lobby were dashed. Voyeurism was bad enough without adding stacking to get in behind someone who knew the  code to unlock the door.
But the view was so Rear Window- ish....

Hitchcock knew how to make a suspenseful movie!
We did go see a couple of movies while we were there. There is a huge United Artist 16 right down on the 16th street mall. I yielded to Jon's choice of The Women in Black ...

I think it was a good movie, for a "Horror" movie, but Ionly say the corner of it, or studied the lighting strips at my feet for 95% of it. It sounded scary...

To make up for it, the next night we went to a true chick flick....

Cute movie and inspire by a true story!

Movie Review: Warrior

yelp.com

Last weekend when we were in Aspen, see my Moonflower Musing Post,  to see the amazing aspens trees, oakbrush and cottonwoods ablaze, Daughter #1 and I went to the retro Isis Theater...

reviewed here on yelp.com

We saw Warrior, about two brother, separated by family troubles, but reunited by fate in a Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighting ring...

Nick Nolte is their alcoholic father, who both gave them the gift of training them both to fight and the curse of a broken family and abuse...

This is both main actors, Joel Edgerton, ( minor roles in King Arthur and Ned Kelly) and Tom Hardy ( starring in TV adaption of Wuthering Heights and minor role in Inception) , first big role and neither has a MMA background and had to go through intense training for the roles and bulk up. Also neither actor is even American, let alone from the tough working class of Pennsylvania, where the movie was filmed and set. Edgerton is an Aussie and Hardy is English.

I wasn't expecting much out of a fight movie, but was pleasantly surprised. Warrior was very engaging and emotional in the story of the family as much as in the action packed fight scenes. A Rocky for the new millennium.

It was refreshing to see a realistic movie of how family battles can last past childhood and into adulthood and in divorce and abuse, the siblings might pull together the older children protecting the younger, more often than not, the siblings take a "everybody for themselves" survival stance and when they grow up, go their separate ways.

The break up of any family has long lasting ramifications and this movie did a wonderful job of showing that, how two brothers would find themselves on two totally different paths, Edgerton, a family man and high school teacher. Hardy, the younger brother, literally wandering the world and full of rage and hate for his father and his brother, but ultimately still coming back and asking his father to train him.

A child of two divorces, I so understand the back and forth pull of wanting to go back and make things right and also wanting to just say "to hell" with those you left behind and move forward. I don't know if we will ever take the time to tally up the damage broken homes are truly doing to this country, there seems to be more pressing problems and most don't realize how much the destruction of the "core family" is the start to such problems.  

MMA is not something most are familiar with, or has a "bad boy" reputation. But since both my daughters are trained in Kenpo Karate, I was trying to get them to do piano lessons, but they picked Karate and my oldest is a Third Degree Brown, one down from a Black, I am more familiar with it than I would have ever imaged!

A combination of traditional boxing and marital arts, where not only punches are thrown, but kicks, and ground work are also allowed. The sport, like all boxing and martial arts fighting is all about excitement so the bouts are fought inside a chain like fenced ring.

Of course there is a dark side to this sport, no argument, but what I have learned since we have do a bit of traveling to Sante Fe and Las Vegas, where  Kenpo  Black and Brown Belts converge every summer from all over the world..

 is most of these guys are huge teddy bears- I have never been around a more "huggy" bunch of men in my life, who could also rip your arm off, if they wanted to!