Still As Life

Wow. I saw Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street at the cinema's with Rhi and her mum this evening and boy can I tell you it was definitely not what we expected. If you haven't heard anything about it yet, have a look at the trailer below.



Okay, so I assume you have seen the trailer now, according to the trailer, it gets an R18+ rating, however, in Australia it is actually only MA15+, bit of a difference.

It gets the rating for "graphic bloody violence" which is, in my opinion, an understatement.

Tim Burton has loaned his amazing directorship to the production along with Johnny Depp (Sweeney Todd) and Helena Bonham Carter's (Mrs. Lovett) excellent acting to create a stunning movie. Put simply, Sweeney Todd is an amazingly well done movie. Burton has achieved an unusually high level of immersion in the film and story, and let me just say this now, there is no way I am ever going to a barber, ever, regardless of how sane he appears.

The story of Sweeney Todd is that of a barber who has a beautiful wife and a baby daughter, until a local judge removes him from the scenario with false accusations and so on so that the judge can take Todd's wife for himself. Todd's wife dies and his daughter becomes the ward of the judge.

When Todd comes back to London, he is a completely different man to who he used to be. He seems to be a reasonable person, though bordering on insanity and he is bent on killing the judge who stole 15 years of his life from him,.

As the movie and story line progresses, Todd and Mrs. Lovett develop an unusual relationship and their apparent sanity diminishes to manic psychosis (I don't know if that is existent, but it's the closest thing I can think to describe it). With every murder they get worse and worse, especially Todd, to the point where he kills the wife that he thought was dead, he kill's Mrs Lovett, he almost kills his daughter without realising who she is, and then he himself is killed, the way that he was killing people, by slitting their throats in his barbers shop with his barbers knives.

The story is a very unusual story, though not what I expected it to be, it was very well done. However, there was way too much gore in my opinion. Honestly, I lost count of how many times you saw someone's throat slit on the screen with blood spraying everywhere.

Amazingly, Burton managed to turn a real life film into a cartoon-like atmosphere. The atmosphere was very much like that of Burton's animated Corpse Bride (where the lead roles were acted by Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter as well).

While it is not an action film, in fact, the majority of the time, it could hardly be called a violent film. It is extremely gory though and it gets to the point that every time you see Todd with a customer in his barbers shop you don't know whether to keep watching or to turn away because you don't know if it is going to be a slit throat, or if it is going to be a real shave.

Todd's motto is "I am going to give you the closest shave of your life," and he definitely delivers.

It is not a horror movie either, IMDB lists it as being a crime/thriller/musical and this is probably the closest way to describe it. If it wasn't for the massive amounts of gore, I would highly recommend this film, but really, I don't think I could watch it a second time, despite how good the story is. So really, I can't recommend it, even though it is a testimony to the skill of Tim Burton, Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter and is absolutely amazing!

Labels: movies

You may recall my post about when I saw The Golden Compass last month. If not, to recap, I didn't think it was very well put together, and was not a good movie.

Rhi loved it, my sister loved it etc, I did not like it.

I just came across a post by Paul Jenkins over at Pauls Blog that pretty much echoes my opinion of The Golden Compass. However, he added another perspective to it that I hadn't even thought of.

He noticed that the story has vast similarities to the original Star Wars story. I find this quite funny really, but it is very true. The story is remarkably similar, except of course, Star Wars was actually good.

For example, as Paul pointed out, in reference to Star Wars, The Magisterium from The Golden Compass is trying to control the world, similarly to The Empire of Star Wars. At the same time, the Gyptians defy them and rescue Lyra. This can of course be referenced to the Rebels of Star Wars rescuing Luke and Leia Skywalker. Luke can use The Force, Lyra can operate the Golden Compass. The most obvious thing though, that I really can't believe I didn't see, near the end of The Golden Compass, Mrs Coulter, the main antagonist reveals to Lyra that she is actually her mother! Oh my! Darth Vader, the main antagonist of Star Wars reveals near the end that he is indeed, Luke's father!

The book was published in 1995, clearly after Star Wars was released in 1977 kind of makes one wonder about it. Ah wells, perhaps I should stop being so cynical.

My apologies to anyone that liked it, but I really don't see what the great appeal of it was/is.

Labels: movies, rants

There's been a lot of hype surrounding The Golden Compass in the past couple of months, I know Rhi has been very excited about it and looking forward to seeing it.

Last night I went to see it with my brother and sister, a bit unsure of what to expect, given that I have not read the book, so I only knew what I had seen in the trailer and what Rhi had told me about it.

Anyway, off I went to see it, and while the animation and acting were both great, and all of the actors were well cast, I think the movie could have been far better. When it finished, I couldn't help but feel like it had been a waste of two hours.

If you don't mind a little spoiler, here is the trailer. If you aren't sure if you want to go see it or not, watch the trailer, almost everything that happens of interest in the movie is in the trailer:



The only thing that isn't in the trailer that is of significant interest is the fight between the armoured bears.

I am sure that its a good story, but the film didn't do it justice. There is a comment on the movie on IMDB by Simon Parker where he says

" If you haven't read the book you'll love it, if you have you'll be a bit disappointed."

This I believe is far from the truth as I definitely did not love it, and I think anyone else who has a similar lack of knowledge of the story won't like it greatly either. The only reason I can see to like it is if you already understand the story and can make sense of what is in the movie.

The story did make sense yes, but it was not well explained, and left a lot of questions. I have to agree with the Triple J movie review that gave it a 2.5/5 which is mysteriously no longer on the Triple J movie review website, I don't think it can really get any higher than this without knowledge of the book. The voters on IMDB have given it an average rating of 6.6/10 at the time of writing this. For every age group, the average is between 6.3 and 7.5.

A contrast to my perspective is that my sister thoroughly enjoyed the movie.

Simon Parker also mentions that the film would benefit from an extra half an hour. While this may be the case, I don't think I could sit through an extra half hour, unless it was filling in more detail near the start of the film.

The reason I say this is that I was in the cinema for half an hour and felt like I had been sitting there for over an hour and nothing had really happened yet. It got to an hour and it felt like I had been there for near two hours and still, nothing much had happened. So if there were to be an extra half hour, I think it would need to be used to make the first half hour of the film more interesting and fill in more details.

I understand that the ending of the book was left off the ending of the movie and is to be included in the start of the second movie instead. Perhaps this would have helped the movie overall, perhaps not. I really hope that the second movie is going to be done better though and not rush the story so much that details are left out and the story loses its appeal.

Labels: movies

Watch it, you know you want to.

"Even the Star Wars Death Star needed a cafeteria. Where else could Darth Vader go and just chill out with the guys in between battles? Well if it did, this is a hilarious re-enactment in Lego style of what you might expect when Vader goes down there for lunch." - Maniac World

Labels: movies

Last night I went and saw "Into The Wild" with Rhi. The turn out at the cinema was quite appalling considering it was premiere night. Aside from Rhi and myself, there were 5 other people, and 2 of them left 15 minutes into the movie. So all up, there were only 5 of us remained for the entire 2 and a half hour movie.

I don't know if it was a poorly publicised movie or if it was just that it was the last showing of the day, but I think this movie has gotten a lot less credit than it deserves.It makes me glad to see that the IMDB average user rating at the time of writing this is 8.2 because this movie really deserved 8+ to say the least.

It is definately not suitable for kids as there are a few scenes with nudity in them, including one scene at the "OMG Hot Springs" which is actually a nudist camp.

However, the movie was superb. It is based on the story of Christopher McCandless who after graduating, effectively throws everything away to go to Alaska and live in the wilderness. His travels lead him all over the United States and even down to Mexico before he finally reaches Alaska, and he does this all by effectively bumming.

He starts going be the name of "Alexander Supertramp" and makes his way all over North America by any means possible, hitchhiking, jumping on freight train cars, working occasionally when he has to and so on. It takes him 2 years to finally reach Alaska, but when he does it's in Winter.

It's obvious he is loving it all, until Spring when he attempts to leave and discovers the river has been drastically swollen by the melting snow and ice. This is when his journey starts to really sour and he discovers he is effectively stuck on what he has named the "Magic Bus", a bus he found and lived in during his time in Alaska, in the middle of nowhere.

The movie is definately not an all happy movie. Part of the reason for his trip is the constant anger at his parents, particularly his father and the treatment he gave his son.

Many times Alex comes across new people and makes friends with them and it is clear that as much as he would like to remain with some of these people, nothing can keep him from making it to Alaska.

I could tell you how the movie ends, but I won't because I really think you should see it for yourself. I highly recommend it. If you still aren't sure, watch the trailer, and I promise you won't be disappointed with the movie if you see it.

Labels: movies

I have been a bit unsure about how the Hitman movie was going to turn out with Timothy Olyphant playing Agent 47 instead of someone like Jason Statham.

However, I went and saw it last night at the cinema with Rhi, the day it was released here in Australia, and I have to admit, he did a much better job of it then I expected.

Here's a little trailer for anyone who hasn't seen it:



I actually enjoyed his acting style quite a lot. He portrayed the awkwardness of a man trained solely as an assassin very well. I highly recommend it, it is remarkably similar to the games, and I found it really well done seeing scenes taken almost directly from the games. Including things like the gun hidden in the toilet from one of the first levels in the very first games, "Hitman: Codename 47".

The average rating on IMDB at the time of writing this is 6.5/10. I've read some of the comments, and I really don't understand why the rating is so low. I think though that for anyone who hasn't played the games though, they miss out on a lot of the references and don't realise how accurate Olyphant's acting is and perceive it to be poor acting instead.

The special effects weren't over the top, but they were perfect in my opinion and pretty much all the acting was excellent!

It was really quite good in pretty much every aspect in my opinion. Go see it! Rhi even enjoyed it and she has no idea what any of the games are like at all.

Labels: movies

I seem to be coming across a few smaller, but good local movies lately. Last night I saw Perfect Creature on DVD with Rhi. Filmed predominately in Auckland, this movie has a great take on vampires that I have never seen explored before.

The main idea behind it, is that the church, or the brotherhood as it is called in the movie, is made up of vampires who are living in harmony with humankind as protectors of the species. However, there are no female vampires, and when one of the brotherhood starts attacking humans and drinking their blood directly, rather than drinking the blood donated to the church, things are thrown into turmoil and its up to a detective and the brotherhood to catch him.

I mentioned there are no female vampires, however, at the end of the movie this changes, but I won't ruin it for you.

In my opinion, this movie was excellent! I believe it was directed by the director of the Lord of the Rings, and the quality of the movie was great. All of the acting was well done, and the time period was conveyed well. As it is set in an alternate dimension, we expect there to be similarities as well as differences, and this has been shown excellently!

I highly recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys a good vampire movie. It is far from action based, but it does have some excellent action scenes as well. The special effects were not over the top, but they were very effective, and the theme of the movie was consistent the whole way through.

Enjoy.

Labels: movies

On Monday evening, I was at uni, for no other reason then that the router at home was completely rooted yet again and was failing to do anything useful at all, and being that it is not my router, and I don't have access to the internet password, I couldn't do much about it.

As one can no doubt imagine, this would be really quite annoying, however, at 8 or so, my good friend Rhiannon sent me a message to see if I wanted to go see a movie as she was quite bored. Sounded like a plan as I was quite over working on a slow connection for that evening.

We decided to go see Gabriel at 9:15, so I had just enough time to get from uni to the cinema at Garden City. I wasn't really sure what to expect from the movie, given that it was meant to be about purgatory, which, as a Seventh Day Adventist, I firmly believe does not exist and is merely a creation of men.

All the same, it looked like it could be interesting so I decided to go along with it. The first 20 minutes or so of it are really a bit boring and introduce you to a series of characters with some bad fake accents. However, it does get much better.

It is a dark action/gothic style of film and the story of the movie revolves around an arc angel, Gabriel, fighting to restore the light to purgatory, as it had become controlled by the fallen.

It really quite surprised me actually, but as the movie progressed, the story line became quite interesting, and while I don't agree with the concept of the movie, I think it was done really well and had some very good idea's, such as portraying purgatory as a city.

The film techniques remind me a great deal of SinCity, and while the acting is not always good, particularly among some of the fallen, much of the acting is very well done, though I think it would have been better if some of the characters had not attempted fake accents.

It was easy to pick up in the first 20 minutes that there were a great deal of Australian actors in the movie, and as it progressed, we both thought it must have been filmed in Australia as well, turns out we were right, it was filmed in Sydney and in the Hunter Valley in NSW.

I've read a few comments on it on the IMDB Gabriel User Comments page, and there are some very poor comments on there that I have to disagree with. There are comments about it being a low budget Aussie film, and for what it is, it is good. Other's just not giving it a chance at all. Personally, I thought it was a good idea, I don't think the fact that it is an Australian film should even matter. Sure, some of the acting is a tad embarrassing, so what? There is plenty of bad acting coming out of the American film industry as well. My opinion of it is that it was well executed, and is definitely one of the better low budget films out there and it left me wanting to see more.

This could in part be that some of the plot occasionally left out information or seemed to skip seemingly important things, but I don't really believe this is the case as the things that seemed to be skipped were mostly explained later on. I think the wanting to see more was caused more by the fact that in it's genre it was well done, the action scenes were not over the top, but they were executed excellently, and while the plot had flaws, it kept one very interested the whole way through.

I definitely want to see it again, but after it is out on DVD.

Labels: movies

Having just spent 2 hours at the cinema watching 30 Days of Night, I feel that I would like my $7 back.

I am glad I get a student discount cause I would be really annoyed if I had spent the full $14.50 on a ticket only to find out how much of a let down it was.

30 Days of Night is a movie about an Alaskan town (don't ask me which exactly as it was not something that was emphasised in the movie) that has a month of darkness.

During this month though, something unusual happens and vampires visit the town and kill almost everyone bar a few survivors. In the end, our hero, Eban, the sheriff, turns himself into a vampire in order to be able to fight the vampires, and then dies in the sunlight as the sun comes back on the morning of the 31st day.

The story itself was not that bad, but what could have been quite a good plot was ruined by an overly beastial portrayal of the vampires, despite their being able to speak a language that seemed quite cool.

I think they would have been better portrayed with a degree of class such as in Underworld, or even Blade.

I had quite a few quibbles with 30 Days of Night in regards to some of the story points.

The first was that when Stella was in an accident just before the darkness came, she commented that her car was totaled, but apart from the tractor being half on top of it, it looked completely undamaged, no visible damage around the tractor or anything.

The second was later, when they were hiding in the attic of one of the houses, they had a lamp on, and they were watching the outside through a torn flap in the roof. Now maybe it's just me, but if it's dark, and there is any gap at all in the attic roof, the light will show through to the outside, and if there is a gap as big as the flap they were looking out, it would be quite visible. Yet the vampires never found them in the attic, despite the fact that they were wandering the roof tops, so many of them would have been eye level with the emitted light.

The third was, it took over a week for there to be a blizzard so they could use it as cover to move outside, and it only lasted for a duration of about 2 minutes in the movie, I would estimate in what they achieved in those 2 minutes that it may have been more like 5-10 minutes if it were real. I'm no expert on it, but surely in that area there would be blizzards, or at least heavy winter storms a bit more frequently than that, and for longer. I know that when we have summer storm weather, we get one almost every day for a week or 2. Not the same I know, but I expect it would be similar. They did mention that it was a whiteout once or twice, which would make sense to be less frequent, but I still don't think it really worked that great in that regard.

There was one or two other things that really annoyed me about it, but it would seem I have since forgotten due to paying less and less attention to it.

No doubt there are people who thought a lot more of it than I did, after all, IMDB's user rating's put it at 7.1/10 at the time of writing this, but I thought it could definitely be better.

Labels: movies, rants