Julia Slaughter

Archive for the ‘Movies’ Category

The Movie Poster for The Lightning Thief

I had mentioned in a previous post that I was so excited to go see The Lightning Thief movie. The only thing that kept me from seeing it opening weekend was that one of my friends who had read, and loved the books as much as I did was too sick to see it and I didn’t want to see it without him. (I like to have someone to compare notes with on these things.)

This past Friday, six of us went to the theater – three who had read the book (two who had read the whole series and one who had just read the first book) and three who had not. My friend Michael and I were sitting next to each other squealing like adolescent girls who had stumbled across Rob Pattinson in dark secluded corner.

From what we knew, we had every reason to believe the movie was going to be wonderful. I had been studying the casting and was pleased with the cast. Kevin McKidd as Poseidon, Sean Bean as Zeus, and Pierce Brosnan as Chiron had me more than hopeful. There were little casting decisions that I was a little hesitant about Alexandra Daddario as Annabeth was going to take some getting used to but I wasn’t ready to write her off  just because she didn’t fit the picture I had in my head of Annabeth.

Of course there was also Chris Columbus heading up the whole thing and anyone who loved Harry Potter and saw what he did for those movies would have to feel safe with any beloved piece of work placed in his hands. The man is meticulous in his attention to detail and really seems interested in preserving the integrity of the work.

As I was sitting in that seat waiting for the movie to start there was only one thing that I was worried about, one thing that could really make or break it, I thought, and that was the special effects. However as the lights dimmed and Kevin McKidd strode out of the waves larger than life and then in an explosion of waves he became a mundane human I breathed easy and settled back into the seat – this was going to be great. However, this was unequivocally not great.

The one part of the movie that I never doubted or questioned was the actual story, after all I read the book, twice in fact, I knew the story. The inconsistencies were small at first, the way Percy learns about his heritage, his introduction to camp and camp life and then things took a turn for the strange.

***There will be spoilers not super specific but still spoilers about the books and the movies, if this sort of thing bothers you, please skip down until you see the next blue!***

When we walked out of the theater, the people who hadn’t read the book were relatively happy with the movie, but I looked at Michael and whispered – “I missed Ares.” It was like opening a flood gate, as we talked about all the things that we were disappointed in that were different between the books and the movies.

If you did a broad overview of the books and the movies they seem similar, but if you dig a little deeper things start to get different. In the books the world of mythology is almost seamlessly integrated into the modern world, but in the movies there is a tangible barrier between the two somehow. It somehow makes the mythological world seem less real for me than it did in the books. The relationships in the book seem more shallow than they do in the books, all of the relationships – Percy and Grover are best friends, but that doesn’t resonate in the movie, not to mention the Demigod relationships with their parents in the book are very complicated and in the movie they are merely dismissed as being made complicated because of a whim of Zeus. The characters themselves come across as very one dimensional – the good guys are all wearing the white hats and once the bad guy puts on his black hat, he’s without any redemption. I know it’s a common thing to say but the book was just so much better.

***Spoilers Ended***

The more I reflected on the movie, the more I wondered how did things go so wrong? How were so many of the pieces there but the most important piece fell short?

I got my answer on Rick Riordan’s website. Apparently he sold the rights to the movie before the books were written, for extra buzz for the series. Therefore, he had no creative control over the movies whatsoever. Rowling and Meyer were smarter in that regard, they cared more for their audience, because when you fall in love with a story – it becomes important to you. I would be interested to see what Riordan thought of the movie, though I suspect that he’s savvy enough not to make any negatives comments in the press, but he can’t be pleased. His writing was sharp, his characters complex, and there are threads that travel from the first book to the end of the series, and the movie plot was not.

I will say that one part of the movie exceeded my expectations though – Grover, portrayed by Brandon T. Jackson made the movie, the character had all the best lines and never failed to steal the show when he stepped onto the screen.

I wonder with the relative success of the movie, where will they go from here? I just hope they decide to take advantage of the wonderful resource available – Rick Riordan save us!

It is a nasty habit that I have that during the holidays, everything suffers. I don’t read as much, I don’t see as many movies (though there seem to be plenty of movies to see), and clearly I don’t blog as much. (Though I am frustrated because I have been tweeting more frequently than my Twitter feed seems to indicate which means I’ve got to poke at that soon.) I will not make excuses, it’s life it happens and you really don’t want to read any excuses so let me instead get on with it…

I picked up some extra work days during the holidays, which means that I get to take a random day off later. I love having a holiday when everyone else is working – it feels decadent to me somehow. Frequently I use these days off to do one of the things I love to do best and I go to the movies early on a Friday.

Not surprisingly on one such Friday I saw Avatar again and I liked it even MORE the second time. I could regal you with charming details and other tidbits I’ve picked up about it since then but I won’t. Avatar has set records, has won some awards, and is nominated for plenty more. I am confident that you’ve heard of, if you’re here you probably know how I feel about it – I’ll spare you the rest.

The Book of Eli Poster

If you’re like I am you might have seen trailers for this, and felt like the trailers seemed interesting but perhaps not interesting enough to motivate you to actually go see it. I was motivated to see it because apparently the author of the material is a friend of my friend Kathryn. (Maybe I’ve found my link to Kevin Bacon?) Kathryn was adamant that I should go see and as she rarely leads me astray – off I went.

I was amused that there was a pair of tiny older Southern ladies sitting in front of me at the theater. (Okay, I admit that I wasn’t so amused when one turned to the other loudly and said “I don’t know why anyone would want to see that” LOUDLY during the Clash of the Titans trailer.) However about two minutes in when a cat gets shot for dinner and they physically recoiled – I was very amused.

I have been telling my friends that the movie is like Mad Max with soul. We’re in a post-apocalyptic world, where people are eating people for want of food (the people who have gone cannibal develop the shakes which identifies them as what they are) and there are people who are pulling together to try to rebuild some semblance of society, the good and bad parts of society are manifested in the various pockets of civilization that appear on the landscape. Eli is a nomad, making his way west, he carries a book and most trailers give you an indication as to what book it is, but I won’t spill the beans here.

I really enjoyed the movie, it was portrayed by a GREAT cast. In addition to Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman, I was thrilled when Ray Stevenson flashed up on screen – I love him! I think he’s a tremendously talented actor. The plot has a twist at the end  that absolutely shocked me! It was something that I just never anticipated. However, I think that despite the sometimes grim and grisly scenes the movie brings in an unexpected audience because it has a powerful message.

I’ve seen a few other movies here and there, I went with a friend and her kids to see Alvin and the Chipmunks, the Squeekel (how the heck do you spell that?!?!). The next movie coming up that I am really excited about opens tomorrow Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief – I’ll let you know how it goes.

I am going to try not to say anything spoilerish, but I can’t make any promises…

In July at Comic Con I saw 25 minutes of James Cameron’s Avatar and I was hooked, when asked later why I was hard pressed to come up with anything more substantial than “it’s pretty.” I didn’t mean that in a girly way I meant that I was looking at a completely rendered world and it was beautiful, colorful, and textured in such a way that made it seem completely substantial.

After months of waiting I finally got to see the movie, and I saw it with an odd assortment of people. There were those who were ardent in their fever to see Avatar, those who were apparently caught up in my excitement, and those who had the “misfortune” of being married to people who fell in one of the first two categories. At the end of the movie, we were all believers, and it was the first time for me in recent memory that we found a movie that we all liked.

I feel like there’s nothing I can say about the special effects of this movie that haven’t already been said – the movie is stunning, the special effects are amazing. The Na’avi were so beautiful and so realistically rendered that I often forgot that they were rendered, the 3D was used subtly – it added to the film, it never took away from the movie by doing any of the silly gimmicky 3D tricks. All of the technology helped submerge you into the film and enhanced the story.

I am shocked by the reviews that have taken issue with characters and plot.  I loved both. I really felt like I was swept up in the main character’s perspective, what started as alien and sometimes intriguing turned into something beautiful.  At several points I found myself so absorbed in the plot that I had tears in my eyes, and it was only through well placed humor that I was laughing instead of crying moments later.

I admit there was nothing about this movie that I didn’t like, and I had even expressed concerns to coworkers abut the length. (The film is 2 hours and 40 minutes long, so when you add in 20 or so minutes of previews and commercials, I knew I would be sitting in the theater for three hours.) I’ve always agreed with Alfred Hitchcock that “the length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.” However, when the film was over I couldn’t believe that there wasn’t MORE film! It was the fastest three hours of my life.

If you haven’t seen this movie, if you aren’t even sure that you want to see it – go and see, consider seeing it in 3D if its available. It’s not just a movie, it’s an experience that no one should miss!

This post contains spoilers, so if you think you might watch this Korean subtitled movie you might want to stop reading. If you’re like I am and knowing some of the plot doesn’t ruin the movie experience for you or if you just doubt you’ll ever want to watch it, feel free to read to your heart’s content. I’ll let you know when the spoiler is coming…

The first foreign, subtitled movie I had ever seen was Raise the Red Lantern – I loved it. Don’t misunderstand me, the story isn’t exactly a cheerful one but I loved that glimpse into 1920 China. It was a world that I had never seen before, a world I couldn’t even imagine and I was hooked. However, at the time it wasn’t quite an easy thing to get your hands on foreign films, you kind of had to take what you could get but now things are different.

I belong to Netflix, I love it. I was a bad movie renter, often getting stuck with late fees because it seems that nothing can entice my friends into making appealing plans like me walking out of the video store with a movie or two in my hand. Netflix fixed all of that and not only did they remove any concern about late fees but they opened a world of foreign films to me so I could find everything that my favorite Chinese director (Zhang Yimou), my favorite actress (Gong Li), and my favorite actor (Takeshi Kaneshiro) – I devoured those movies. After that I struck out on my own and checked out other foreign films, sometimes I would browse through and find something that seemed interesting and other times I would make selections based on what Netflix has recommended for me.

I was badly burned by Netflix recommendations once. I had some Chinese movie that I hadn’t watched at home and my Pastor mentioned his cable was out and he was movieless. I told him that I had a few at home I could lend him until the cable guy came around the next day or so. I did preface all of this with the comment that I hadn’t watched any of the movies yet and they were Netflix recommendations. When he brought me back the movies the next day he gave me the oddest look. In retrospect, he was probably trying to determine WHAT I had watched to get that particular movie recommended to me. I’ve forgotten the name of the movie but it was about a girl whose family made their fortune on Opium, she falls in love with a scoundrel and has “relations” with her cousin to try to become a more suitable match for the scoundrel. I can’t tell you how confused I was by the movie, and how embarrassed I was that I had lent it to my pastor! Apparently once you are interested in anything that falls into the Foreign film genre, Netflix recommends anything Foreign to you. A lesson learned the hard way.

I’ve since licked my wounds, and gone back to watching Foreign films from Netflix, however I’ve learned another valuable lesson – one that I had forgotten but Netflix was so kind to remind me. I don’t really think that the people who write the movie descriptions for the Foreign movies ever actually watch the movies, I once selected a Chinese “comedy” that ends when a character tragically gets hit by a bus! (The first fifteen minutes or so were quite funny.)

This is the description that Netflix gave me about the movie :

Sisters Jin and Bin must fend for themselves when their mother abruptly packs her things, leaving the girls in the care of their alcoholic aunt  without a word as to when she’ll return. In a tale of innocence lost, the sisters try to make sense of their mother’s absence. But in the meantime, 6-year-old Jin will be forced to mature far beyond her tender years.

But after further investigation I discovered a more accurate description:

When their mother needs to leave in order to find their estranged father, six-year-old Jin and her younger sister, Bin, are left to live with their Big Aunt for the summer. With only a small piggy bank and their mother’s promise to return when it is full, the two young girls are forced to acclimate to changes in their family life. Counting the days, and the coins, the two bright-eyed young girls eagerly anticipate their mother’s homecoming. But when the bank fills up, and with their mother still not back, Big Aunt decides that she can no longer tend to the children. Taken to live on their grandparent’s farm, it is here that Jin comes to learn the importance of family bonds in this beautiful, meditative, and thought-provoking second feature from So Yong Kim.

!!This is where the spoilers come in so you might want to skip this and come back and see me later!!

I watched this entire movie with my seat back in its upright position and my tray table locked, braced and ready for impact. The children acting in the movie are beautiful and endearing, they tugged on my heart strings and I wanted desperately to protect them.  However, here’s the thing there was really no one to protect them from a negligent mother who drops out of the movie almost immediately, an Aunt who is not an alcoholic though she is certainly not kind, but at the end of the movie just as I was braced for it to get worse – it did something unexpected, it got better.

The girls get sent to live with their grandparents and the movie ends with a sweet hopeful song. I released my breath when the credits started, I didn’t realize I had been holding my breath but I was. I just knew the tragedy was waiting to strike and instead the girls seem in a much better place than they ever where with their aunt or mother.

Oh Netflix, you’ve got to do better than this on these foreign movies – you’re going to give me a stroke!

TREELESS MOUNTAIN: Movie Trailer – Watch more amazing videos here

As I may have mentioned before, I was really excited to see the footage for James Cameron’s Avatar at Comic Con. They showed over 20 minutes of footage and it was amazing! Well today I realized that I merely provided a link to the trailer when I could actually post it here. I can’t wait to see it! It’s only a mere three months away!

Not to be a total fan girl, but I must admit -  I can’t wait for December to see this movie! Today the have released the official trailer for James Cameron’s Avatar, if you haven’t seen it yet – you can follow this link to get there:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/avatar/

I haven’t watched it yet because I have no speakers at work but I can tell you that the footage I saw at Comic Con took my breath away!