Category Archives: entertainment

05.22.13
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Blockbusters, Ahoy!

All right, so last week, as I noted, we saw Iron Man 3. If you haven’t seen the film yet and plan to, skip this blog entry as there be minor spoilers. I’m not going to do an in-depth review but will post brief reactions to certain elements in the movie. This goes the same with Star Trek: Into Darkness.

BTW, I’m not a “real” diehard fan or even a “real” geek when it comes to these films / genres. I love superheroes and enjoy Star Trek (mostly The Next Generation), but I’m definitely ignorant about way too many things about them. So my reactions are those of a layman, so to speak, and my interpretations of certain plot points could very well be off the mark.

1. The whole Mandarin subplot was anticlimactic. I was really hoping to see Ben Kingsley as a ruthless villain, considering the controversy surrounding his casting. As I’m not a comic book aficionado despite my love for superheroes, I was looking forward to seeing the Mandarin for the first time. I understood the purpose for what the writers did, but it still left me deflated and dissatisfied.

2. The movie was very much a Robert Downey, Jr. fanservice thing, with zingers flying all over the place as only RDJ could deliver them. It was fun half the time, but the other half, it got a bit old.

3. Pepper Potts kicking ass! :D All right, so it was a fluke, and I still had to cringe my way through another “damsel in distress” scene in order to see a fantastic payoff, but beggars can’t be choosers where female roles in adventure films are concerned. Sigh. Too bad it was short-lived, but it was naturally too dangerous for her to be in that state (plus it’s not in her nature to be violent), so I had to regretfully bid her ass-kicking kinda-sorta alter ego goodbye.

4. Guy Pearce rocks every role he takes on. Period.

5. How would the Avengers writers work this into the Avengers 2 timeline? At the end of the movie, I assume that Tony Stark’s retired even if he still has Jarvis, but it means starting over where his suits are concerned in case S.H.I.E.L.D. calls him into action again. All the memories that haunted him were all from the first Avengers battle in New York and no hints of anything else we haven’t seen. I might be reading this incorrectly, of course, but still.

All in all, while the movie was a fun way of spending an idle evening, it wasn’t anywhere near the first Iron Man installment (and the less said about the second movie, the better).

And today, we saw Star Trek: Into Darkness.

1. I’m still very fuzzy as to Marcus’ purpose for doing what he did. I’m wondering if I have to watch it again in order to follow the story more closely seeing as how the first viewing is really mostly about experiencing the movie with zero ideas on what to expect, plot-wise. Now that I know what happens, I need to mull over specific details that drive the story forward.

2. The plot adds nothing new – at least to fans of Star Trek – but it continues to introduce non-fans to the universe (albeit an alternate one). On a fangirly note, I’m now wondering whether or not the Romulans will ever be brought in if there’s another movie in the works; I mean, hey, now we get to see the Klingons, right? The Romulans have always been my favorite villains. :D

3. Female roles – yeesh. Yes, Uhura’s a strong female character, but she still had to be turned into a love interest. At least she wasn’t shadowing Spock around like a watery-eyed, lovestruck puppy the way she did in the first movie. Carol Marcus is a weapons specialist who had to be momentary eye candy in her underwear. Sigh. Wanted: serious ass-kicking female hero, fully clothed and with no romantic interest anywhere within her lifetime.

4. Benedict Cumberbatch is magnificent. But I expected nothing less from him. I guess I’ll have to watch Amazing Grace and enjoy his work as William Pitt while ignoring the overly romanticized take on William Wilberforce’s fight to abolish slavery. I’ve been on the fence with regard to that movie, and I really shouldn’t be. ^^;;;

5. Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto are holding their own pretty damned well as Kirk and Spock. I was pleased to see Scotty get more screen time compared to before, though too bad Sulu remains sadly underused even with him taking over the captain’s role for a moment. But working with an ensemble cast is a tricky juggling act, and priorities need to be made according to character hierarchy, I suppose.

I definitely enjoyed this film much more than Iron Man 3 despite its somewhat stagnant take on the Trek universe and its muddy plot points. At the very least there’s a lot more going for it by way of characterization, and, yeah, I wouldn’t mind seeing it again.

05.22.13
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Look, I’m Still Here

Drive-by distraction video post because I’m getting ready to take ye hubby out to see Star Trek: Into the Darkness, where I can revel in Benedict Cumberbatch’s screen presence (and voice OMG!) and shriek in fury at stupid, gratuitous, sexist bra-and-panties moments involving female officers. I also saw Iron Man 3 last week and will yammer endlessly about that movie later. Okay, maybe not endlessly…

So – since I’m firmly on entertainment mode, I thought I’d fangirl the fantastic combo of Florence and the Machine and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I haven’t seen The Great Gatsby as I’m not that keen on the book even if I appreciate Fitzgerald’s style and the book’s point. I’m also not too keen on anachronistic soundtracks, either, but Florence and the Machine’s song works. Brilliantly.

05.17.13
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Pride and Prejudice: Having a Ball at Chawton House

Reblogged from Jane Austen's World:

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Inquiring readers, It's such a delight to receive first-hand information from a friend who lives in the U.K. Frequent contributor, Tony Grant, writes about his impressions of seeing the BBC2 special last Sunday entitled Pride and Prejudice: Having a Ball. The scenes were filmed in Chawton House wherein a Regency ball was reconstructed in a way that Jane Austen's contemporaries knew well, but whose meanings in many instances have been lost to us.

Read more… 2,722 more words

Lots of fun stuff here (hello, fiction resource!). I hope I could watch this somewhere (online) for a better understanding of certain Regency practices and for possible story ideas.
05.11.13
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Hansel and Gretel: Cheap Thrills Date Night

Okay, man, that was quite a ride – no pun intended, i.e., broomsticks. Having seen the trailers and read the critics’ reviews (14% at Rotten Tomatoes, ye gads!), I knew where to keep my expectations going into the movie. Yes, they were pretty darned low, and that helped a lot in making me sit through the whole thing laughing half the time (and half of that was sincere amusement, while the other half was more of the “Okay, that was bad” chortle) and predicting what was going to happen next to this character or that character. The only one I missed was the sheriff, whom I first suspected to be in cahoots with the witches. Well, dag nab it.

Looking back at the original fairy tale, though, I can see so many elements in it that would work pretty darned well when taken down a crazy path like what I saw in the movie. Hansel and Gretel turning into witch-hunting bounty hunters? Well, duh. Even without it riding the coattails of all those monster mash-up films and books, the logic’s there. Children and witches? Ayup, folklore from all over is bursting at the seams with so many possibilities, variations, and variations of various possibilities. Know what I mean?

One can take something in the folktale and play the “what if” game and follow that trail continuously to extreme lengths as long as the logic holds, and the writing and directing do it justice. Hansel and Gretel + traumatic experience in a witch’s cottage = vengeful bounty hunters. Vengeful bounty hunters + perfect track record = fanboy love with scrapbook and fanart = bounty-hunter-apprentice. Parents + children’s abandonment in forest = possibly misread cues by the kids who know nothing about their mother’s true nature. All right, so that last equation might not be correct as far as mathematical sequences go, but you get my drift. The logic in the choices the writers made with regard to plotting were there, but, man, so much more could’ve gone into it.

So yeah – I saw those elements in the film that would’ve turned out brilliantly had the writing and the directing been, um, different. I found some of the dark humor and the purposefully used anachronisms pretty funny, and I mean that sincerely even though I went into this expecting not to take the movie seriously (see: low expectations). Then again, I think that was the movie’s point – it’s all dark, trashy fun (though, as noted, it could’ve been much, much, much better in its darkly fun trashiness).

Back to reading M.R. James. I’m still on a ghost story kick, by the way. Because I’ll never change, and because… haunted houses.

05.08.13
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Fun Times: Crooked House

Since I’m on a ghost story kick (when have I ever NOT been on a ghost story kick?), I decided to skim through Netflix’s titles and saw Crooked House, which I immediately watched because, you know, haunted house.

It was originally shown as a series in the UK, it looks like, but Netflix offers the omnibus. And it turned out to be a pretty fun way to pass the time – not necessarily creepy, no, but fun. I generally like Mark Gatiss’ work, but sometimes it falls flat, and the first two stories of the three in Crooked House end somewhat anticlimactically. The third story was the most complete or at least the best conceived, but I think it benefits a lot from the fact that the seeds of the plot were already planted from the beginning, i.e., the story completes the arc of the series, while the other two were independent stories that could’ve benefited greatly from a longer run time.

The omnibus clocked in at an hour and a half, which means each story only gets thirty minutes, tops, and the lengthy opening scene introducing the history of Geap Manor eats into some of that time.

I think the first two stories would’ve been fantastic had they been turned into two two-hour TV movies or something. “The Wainscoting”, especially, had everything I wanted in a traditional haunted house story (and it takes place in the 18th century!), but it unfolded way too quickly, and the ending was – disappointing. Though I did have fun noting that Philip Jackson and Beth Goddard were there, when I knew them best as Inspector Japp and Violet Wilson in the Poirot series.

“Something Old” also had all the elements I love in haunted house stories, but events happened only in one night – though a one-night-event could plausibly be explored in a lengthier run time – and I couldn’t care a jot what would happen to any of the characters. Heck, the drippy bride-to-be annoyed me enough to want to see her offed as per the ghost’s curse. I guess there was nothing for me to hold on to in the second story, which I felt was the weakest of the group.

Even “The Wainscoting” showed some character struggle in Bloxham as well as the side characters, but for me, character development in “Something Old” was negligible, if any.

“The Knocker” was my favorite if only in the way the story developed. Plot-wise, I prefer “The Wainscoting”.

Still, I thought the whole thing was a nice, fun way of spending a leisurely evening. The hauntings are subtle, which is the hallmark of classic ghost stories, and that made me think of a pretty long horror novel I read a little while ago and ended up disliking a lot.

It was a ghost story that was self-published, and I had to skim through a number of scenes because while it was well written in a technical sense, it did suffer from over-the-top haunting scenes. It was like, once the ghost made its presence known, each chapter had at least one haunting scene, with each scene getting more and more wild and absurd.

Then, with all those crammed hauntings and horrific scenes of mutilation and torture (that ended up sounding the same when at least five characters go through the ordeal), the ending doesn’t even give us a satisfying conclusion. Just like with a number of classic ghost stories, this one ends with the ghost undefeated and set to torment a new set of people. I’d normally be okay with that when it comes to short stories (I expect it, even), but with something this long and bloated, I felt cheated at not having any kind of closure.

It was the same kind of issue I had with the most recent film version of The Woman in Black, and I certainly would love to see more writers take the time to make their ghost stories unfold more subtly. It’s a lot creepier for me, anyway, when I’m not having my brain beaten again and again with almost desperate insistence about the house being haunted.